A thermionic electron gun to characterize silicon drift detectors with electrons

Abstract

The TRISTAN detector is a new detector for electron spectroscopy at the Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino (KATRIN) experiment. The semiconductor detector utilizes the silicon drift detector technology and will enable the precise measurement of the entire tritium beta decay electron spectrum. Thus, a significant fraction of the parameter space of potential neutrino mass eigenstates in the keV-mass regime can be probed. We developed a custom electron gun based on the effect of thermionic emission to characterize the TRISTAN detector modules with mono-energetic electrons before installation into the KATRIN beamline. The electron gun provides an electron beam with up to 25 keV kinetic energy and an electron rate in the order of 1E5 electrons per second. This manuscript gives an overview of the design and commissioning of the electron gun. In addition, we will shortly discuss a first measurement with the electron gun to characterize the electron response of the TRISTAN detector.

References in corpus (7)

• Multiscale finite element calculations in Python using SfePy
• A novel detector system for KATRIN to search for keV-scale sterile neutrinos
• Improved eV-scale Sterile-Neutrino Constraints from the Second KATRIN Measurement Campaign
• Characterization of a Silicon Drift Detector for High-Resolution Electron Spectroscopy
• A pulsed, mono-energetic and angular-selective UV photo-electron source for the commissioning of the KATRIN experiment
• Characterization of Silicon Drift Detectors with Electrons for the TRISTAN Project
• Development of a Silicon Drift Detector Array to Search for keV-scale Sterile Neutrinos with the KATRIN Experiment

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Investigations of Charge Collection and Signal Timing in a multi-pixel Silicon Drift Detector
• Investigation of Electron Backscattering on Silicon Drift Detectors for the Sterile Neutrino Search with TRISTAN