Probing the heart of neutrinos with CUORE and CUPID

Abstract:  The Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events (CUORE) is the first tonne-scale bolometric experiment searching for neutrinoless double beta decay. The detector consists of an array of 988 TeO2 crystals arranged in a cylindrical compact structure of 19 towers. After the completion of the detector construction in August 2016, CUORE was successfully cooled down to a base temperature below 8 mK by the beginning of 2017. Following an intense period of detector commissioning and optimization, the first physics data were taken in May-September 2017, resulting in the most stringent limits to date on the neutrinoless double-beta decay of Te-130. We will describe the performance of the CUORE cryostat and the detector systems and discuss the first physics results from CUORE. We will also discuss a follow-up program, dubbed CUPID (CUORE Upgrade with Particle ID), a proposed next-generation bolometric experiment that aims to improve the sensitivity to 0nuDBD rate by another order of magnitude, and to be able to discover this rare process if it is consistent with the inverted hierarchy of neutrino masses.