Relativistic Cyclotron Radiation Detection of Tritium Decay Electrons as a New Technique for Measuring the Neutrino Mass

Abstract

The shape of the beta decay energy distribution is sensitive to the mass of the electron neutrino. Attempts to measure the endpoint shape of tritium decay have so far seen no distortion from the zero-mass form, thus placing an upper limit of m_nu_beta < 2.3 eV. Here we show that a new type of electron energy spectroscopy could improve future measurements of this spectrum and therefore of the neutrino mass. We propose to detect the coherent cyclotron radiation emitted by an energetic electron in a magnetic field. For mildly relativistic electrons, like those in tritium decay, the relativistic shift of the cyclotron frequency allows us to extract the electron energy from the emitted radiation. We present calculations for the energy resolution, noise limits, high-rate measurement capability, and systematic errors expected in such an experiment.

4 pages, 2 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Massive neutrinos and cosmology
• Exact relativistic tritium beta-decay endpoint spectrum in a hadron model

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Machine Learning in Nuclear Physics
• The Present and Future Status of Heavy Neutral Leptons
• Direct Measurements of Neutrino Mass
• Long Range Interactions in Cosmology: Implications for Neutrinos
• Particle Physics at the European Spallation Source
• Bayesian Analysis of a Future Beta Decay Experiment's Sensitivity to Neutrino Mass Scale and Ordering
• Quantum analysis of second-order effects in superconducting travelling-wave parametric amplifiers
• Direct determination of the atomic mass difference of the pairs ${}^{76}$As-${}^{76}$Se and ${}^{155}$Tb-${}^{155}$Gd rules out ${}^{76}$As and ${}^{155}$Tb as possible candidates for electron (anti)neutrino mass measurements
• Identification of a potential ultra-low Q value electron capture decay branch in ${}^{75}$Se via a precise Penning trap measurement of the mass of ${}^{75}$As
• SYNCA: A Synthetic Cyclotron Antenna for the Project 8 Collaboration
• Status and Perspectives of Neutrino Physics