A test of electric charge conservation with Borexino

Understand

Borexino is a liquid scintillation detector located deep underground at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS, Italy).

• Thanks to the unmatched radio-purity of the scintillator, and to the well understood detector response at low energy, a new limit on the stability of the electron for decay into a neutrino and a single mono-energetic photon was obtained.
• This new bound, tau > 6.6 10**28 yr at 90 % C.L., is two orders of magnitude better than the previous limit.