Neutrinoless double beta decay of Ge-76, Se-82, Mo-100, and Xe-136 to excited 0(+) states - art. no. 035501

The neutrinoless double-beta-decay (0 nu beta beta decay) transition to the first excited 0(+) collective final state is examined for A = 76, 82, 100, and 136 nuclei by assuming light and heavy Majorana neutrino exchange mech anisms as well as the trilinear R-parity violating contributions. Realistic calculations of nuclear matrix elements have been performed within the ren ormalized quasiparticle random phase approximation. Transitions to the firs t excited two-quadrupole phonon 0(+) state are described within a boson exp ansion formalism and alternatively by using the operator recoupling method. We present the sensitivity parameters to different lepton number violating signals, which can be used in planning the 0 nu beta beta -decay experimen ts. The half-life of 0 nu beta beta decay to the first excited state 0(1)() is by a factor of 10-100 larger than that of the transition to the ground state, 0(g.s.)(+).