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Abstract

Detection of the recoil energy deposited by a weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) scattering off a nucleus or of the neutrinoless double beta decay signature in a 'naked' (natural or enriched) Ge crystal immersed in liquid nitrogen provides a new, yet simple implementation of a well know technology to the fields of direct dark matter and double beta decay searches. We show that an array with a total mass of 40 kg of natural Ge and 11 kg of enriched Ge-76 detectors operated in liquid nitrogen in a compact setup could yield important physics results by directly looking for a WIMP signature and testing the Majorana neutrino mass down to 0.1 eV. The method could be easily extended to much larger masses and, by increasing the amount of liquid nitrogen surrounding the detectors, to much lower backgrounds. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.