Title: Neutrinoless double beta decay: The role of effective field theory and lattice QCD
Abstract: Neutrinoless double beta decay, being a lepton-number violating process, has been the focus of numerous experimental and theoretical investigations in recent years, and the hope is the the planned US ton-scale experiment will push the current limits towards a discovery. If observed, it unambiguously proves that neutrinos are Majorana particles. Nonetheless, the underlying new physics responsible for this process can only be constrained if the theoretical predictions of the rate could be refined. This talk demonstrates the roadmap in connecting the underlying theory to the corresponding nuclear matrix elements, focusing mainly on the nonperturbative nucleonic matrix elements in the simplest extension of Standard Model in which the light left-handed neutrino is mediating the process. The role of lattice QCD and effective field theory in this program will be discussed. Finally, we discuss the prospect of a direct matching of the nn to pp amplitude to effective field theory within the light-neutrino exchange scenario.