Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay of Ge76, Se82, Mo100 and Xe136 to excited 0+ states

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The neutrinoless double beta decay transition to the first excited 0+ collective final state is examined for A=76, 82, 100 and 136 nuclei by assuming light and heavy Majorana neutrino exchange mechanisms as well as the trilinear R-parity violating contributions. Realistic calculations of nuclear matrix elements have been performed within the renormalized quasiparticle random phase approximation. Transitions to the first excited two-quadrupole phonon 0+ state are described within a boson expansion formalism and alternatively by using the operator recoupling method. We present the sensitivity parameters to different lepton number violating signals, which can be used in planning the neutrinoless double beta decay experiments. The half-life of neutrinoless double beta decay to the first excited state 0+₁ is by a factor of 10 to 100 larger than that of the transition to the ground state.