The NEXT experiment: in search of neutrinoless double beta decay

Neutrinoless double beta decay is a hypothetical rare process that violates lepton number conservation and implies the Majorana nature of neutrinos, which could also give insight into their absolute mass scale. The NEXT collaboration searches for such decay with Xe-136, exploiting high-pressure xenon gas TPCs with electroluminescent amplification. The principal trademarks of the experiment include an excellent energy resolution at the Qbb (<1% FWHM), as well as a highly refined topology reconstruction of events that boosts the signal-to-background discrimination. The latest results from the NEXT-White demonstrator, which were obtained by exploiting the full data-taking campaign of this detector, are presented here. In addition, the status of the upcoming apparatus, NEXT-100, and prospects for ton-scale and beyond R&D will be commented on as well.