0000000000319325

AUTHOR

D. Furse

Focal-plane detector system for the KATRIN experiment

The focal-plane detector system for the KArlsruhe TRItium Neutrino (KATRIN) experiment consists of a multi-pixel silicon p-i-n-diode array, custom readout electronics, two superconducting solenoid magnets, an ultra high-vacuum system, a high-vacuum system, calibration and monitoring devices, a scintillating veto, and a custom data-acquisition system. It is designed to detect the low-energy electrons selected by the KATRIN main spectrometer. We describe the system and summarize its performance after its final installation.

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Commissioning of the vacuum system of the KATRIN Main Spectrometer

The KATRIN experiment will probe the neutrino mass by measuring the β-electron energy spectrum near the endpoint of tritium β-decay. An integral energy analysis will be performed by an electro-static spectrometer (``Main Spectrometer''), an ultra-high vacuum vessel with a length of 23.2 m, a volume of 1240 m[superscript 3], and a complex inner electrode system with about 120 000 individual parts. The strong magnetic field that guides the β-electrons is provided by super-conducting solenoids at both ends of the spectrometer. Its influence on turbo-molecular pumps and vacuum gauges had to be considered. A system consisting of 6 turbo-molecular pumps and 3 km of non-evaporable getter strips ha…

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Reduction of stored-particle background by a magnetic pulse method at the KATRIN experiment

Arenz, M., et al. “Reduction of Stored-Particle Background by a Magnetic Pulse Method at the KATRIN Experiment.” The European Physical Journal C, vol. 78, no. 9, Sept. 2018. © 2018 The Authors

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Improved Upper Limit on the Neutrino Mass from a Direct Kinematic Method by KATRIN

We report on the neutrino mass measurement result from the first four-week science run of the Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino experiment KATRIN in spring 2019. Beta-decay electrons from a high-purity gaseous molecular tritium source are energy analyzed by a high-resolution MAC-E filter. A fit of the integrated electron spectrum over a narrow interval around the kinematic end point at 18.57 keV gives an effective neutrino mass square value of (−1.0−1.1+0.9) eV2. From this, we derive an upper limit of 1.1 eV (90% confidence level) on the absolute mass scale of neutrinos. This value coincides with the KATRIN sensitivity. It improves upon previous mass limits from kinematic measurements by almost a …

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Determining the neutrino mass with cyclotron radiation emission spectroscopy—Project 8

The most sensitive direct method to establish the absolute neutrino mass is observation of the endpoint of the tritium beta-decay spectrum. Cyclotron Radiation Emission Spectroscopy (CRES) is a precision spectrographic technique that can probe much of the unexplored neutrino mass range with $\mathcal{O}({\rm eV})$ resolution. A lower bound of $m(\nu_e) \gtrsim 9(0.1)\, {\rm meV}$ is set by observations of neutrino oscillations, while the KATRIN Experiment - the current-generation tritium beta-decay experiment that is based on Magnetic Adiabatic Collimation with an Electrostatic (MAC-E) filter - will achieve a sensitivity of $m(\nu_e) \lesssim 0.2\,{\rm eV}$. The CRES technique aims to avoid…

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