Searching for Majorana neutrinos with GERDA

The observation of neutrinoless double beta (0νββ) decay would establish both the violation of lepton number conservation and the Majorana nature of the neutrino, as well as constrain the neutrino mass hierarchy and scale. The GERDA experiment has reached an important milestone in the search for 0νββ decay with ⁷⁶Ge by achieving a half-life sensitivity of 10²⁶ years. This is made possible by the background-free conditions in GERDA and by a factor of two increase in exposure since the last data release in 2017. The latest results from GERDA will be presented and compared to other 0νββ decay experiments. Additionally, the relevance of this search for probing the neutrino mass scale will be discussed.