Heidelberg 2015 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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MS: Fachverband Massenspektrometrie
MS 4: Ion Traps, Molecules, Clusters, Decay and Reactions
MS 4.1: Hauptvortrag
Dienstag, 24. März 2015, 11:00–11:30, PH/HS2
Direct search for the neutrino mass: the KATRIN experiment — •Christian Weinheimer for the KATRIN collaboration — Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster
Since the discovery of neutrino oscillations we know that neutrinos have non-zero masses, but the absolute neutrino mass scale is still unknown. The knowledge of the neutrino masses is very important for astrophysics and cosmology as well as for nuclear and particle physics.
With the KArlsruhe TRItium Neutrino experiment KATRIN we directly search for the neutrino mass by investigating the endpoint region of the tritium beta decay spectrum at 18.6 keV with ultra-high precision and sensitivity. This method is complementary to the search for neutrinoless double beta-decay and analyses of cosmological data.
The KATRIN experiment, which is being set up at Karlsruhe Institute for Technology, will improve the sensitivity of direct neutrino mass experiments by one order of magnitude down to 200 meV/c2. The apparatus consists of a windowless gaseous tritium source, a beta electron transport and tritium elimination system based on differential and cryogenic pumping, and a doublet of electron spectrometers of MAC-E-Filter type followed by an electron detector. Its high sensitivity requires KATRIN to be technically very demanding and to drive several technologies to the extreme.
Currently the KATRIN spectrometer and detector system (SDS) is being commissioned. In this talk the status of the KATRIN experiment and the recent SDS commissioning measurements will be presented.
The work of the author is supported by BMBF Verbundforschung.