A scalable enhanced implementation of pulse shape analysis for 76Ge double-beta decay

Recent evidence for neutrino mass has resulted from numerous neutrino oscillation experiments. These results have prompted increased interest in neutrinoless double-beta decay (0ν ββ-decay). Unlike neutrino oscillation experiments, 0ν ββ-decay can probe the effective neutrino mass range suggested by oscillation results as well as the Majorana or Dirac nature of the neutrino. Searching for 0ν ββ-decay using HPGe spectrometers made of enriched (86%) ⁷⁶Ge is a technique favored by current and next-generation experiments. The long half-lives of ββ decay makes detection challenging and low background levels necessary. With important remaining backgrounds due to cosmogenic activation products in the germanium itself (⁶⁰Co,⁶⁸Ge), techniques for discriminating background events from 0ν ββ-decay are critical. Previous work resulted in a technique which, by extracting interaction multiplicity from the shape of the current pulse evolved in an HPGe spectrometer, allowed discrimination of 0ν ββ-decay events with low interaction multiplicity from the expected background events having much higher interaction multiplicity. This work describes an enhanced implementation with faster algorithms and a scalable C++ architecture more suitable for next-generation experiments. The performance of this new implementation of a self-calibrating 3-D parametric discriminator is demonstrated and compared to the previous work.