KATRIN - a new tritium beta decay experiment to study the electron neutrino mass in the sub-eV range

摘要

A precise measurement of the endpoint region of the tritium beta decay spectrum (E_0 = 18.56 keV) allows to directly determine the mass of the electron neutrino. We present a new experiment with sub-eV sensitivity, which will measure the endpoint region making use of a large electrostatic retarding spectrometer. After passing the spectrometer detection of the decay electrons could be achieved by a large microcalorimeter array. The excellent resolution of such a detector would make it possible to reduce the influence of background events considerably, thus enhancing the sensitivity to sub-eV v-masses.