Status and Prospects for the EXO-200 and nEXO Experiments

Large ultra-low background liquid xenon detectors have recently emerged as a promising technology that can push the neutrinoless double beta decay search to unprecedented sensitivity. Since it began operation, EXO-200 has completed one of the most sensitive searches for 0νββ decay of ¹³⁶Xe using its first two years of data. After an unexpected interruption, due to underground incidents at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), EXO-200 has started its Phase-II running in April 2016 with upgrades to its front-end electronics and Rn suppression system. In this article, we report the performance data of upgraded EXO-200 detector and the projected sensitivity for its Phase-II running. nEXO is a next-generation tonne-scale experiment building on the success of EXO-200. This 5 tonne LXe detector will be capable of probing Majorana neutrino mass in the inverted mass hierarchy region. The status of the nEXO experiment will be discussed in the article.