Status and Prospects of the LEGEND Experiment*

The Large Enriched Germanium Experiment for Neutrinoless double-beta Decay (LEGEND) project will search for the lepton-number-violating neutrinoless double-beta (0νββ) decay of ⁷⁶Ge. This discovery would have far-reaching implications in cosmology and particle physics, such as establishing the Majorana nature of the neutrino and constraining the neutrino mass scale in the picture of light-neutrino exchange. Using High Purity Germanium (HPGe) detectors enriched in the isotope ⁷⁶Ge and directly immersed into liquid argon (LAr), LEGEND exploits the combination of superior energy resolution of germanium detectors and scintillating properties of LAr crucial for background reduction. The first phase, LEGEND-200, comprises 200 kg of ⁷⁶Ge-enriched detectors and is presently under construction at LNGS in Italy. It will serve as a testbed for technology improvements and as an intermediate step to the tonne-scale project. LEGEND-200 has started its first physics run with an initial 142 kg of germanium diodes (101 detectors). The other 50 kg of detectors will be characterized and installed in early 2024 to reach its full mass. The second phase of the experiment, LEGEND-1000, aims to improve the discovery sensitivity by another order of magnitude with 1 tonne of large-mass, high-purity, enriched germanium detectors operated for ten years. In this talk, the status and science outlook of LEGEND will be presented, on behalf of the collaboration.