Direct determination of Neutrino Mass from Tritium Beta Spectrum

Abstract

The investigation of the endpoint region of the tritium beta decay spectrum is still the most sensitive direct method to determine the neutrino mass scale. In the nineties and the beginning of this century the tritium beta decay experiments at Mainz and Troitsk have reached a sensitivity on the neutrino mass of 2 eV/c^2 . They were using a new type of high-resolution spectrometer with large sensitivity, the MAC-E-Filter, and were studying the systematics in detail. Currently, the KATRIN experiment is being set up at Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe, Germany. KATRIN will improve the neutrino mass sensitivity by one order of magnitude down to 0.2 eV/c^2, sufficient to cover the degenerate neutrino mass scenarios and the cosmologically relevant neutrino mass range.

arXiv comment38 pages, 17 figures. Lectures given at the International School of Physics "Enrico Fermi", CLXX course "Measurements of Neutrino Mass", June 17-27, 2008, Varenna, Italy

References in corpus (1)

• Five-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Cosmological Interpretation

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Are observations of the galaxy cluster Abell 1689 consistent with a neutrino dark matter scenario?
• Do micro brown dwarf detections explain the galactic dark matter?
• Prediction for the neutrino mass in the KATRIN experiment from lensing by the galaxy cluster A1689
• Warm dark matter sterile neutrinos in electron capture and beta decay spectra