<i>Ab initio</i> studies of the double–Gamow-Teller transition and its correlation with neutrinoless double-<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mi>β</mml:mi></mml:math> decay

Abstract

We use chiral interactions and several ab initio methods to compute the nuclear matrix elements (NMEs) for ground-state-to-ground-state double Gamow-Teller transitions in a range of isotopes and explore the correlation of these NMEs with those for neutrinoless double beta decay produced by the exchange of a light Majorana neutrino. When all the NMEs of both isospin-conserving and isospin-changing transitions from the ab initio calculations are considered, the correlation is strong. For the experimentally relevant isospin-changing transitions by themselves, however, the correlation is weaker and may not be helpful for reducing the uncertainty in the NMEs for neutrinoless double beta decay.