Final scientific and technical report: New experiments to measure the neutrino mass scale
- Univ. of California, Santa Barbara, CA (United States)
In this work, we made material progress towards future measurements of the mass of the neutrino. The neutrino is a fundamental particle, first observed in the 1950s and subjected to particularly intense study over the past 20 years. It is now known to have some, non-zero mass, but we are in an unusual situation of knowing the mass exists but not knowing what value it takes. The mass may be determined by precise measurements of certain radioactive decay distributions, particularly the beta decay of tritium. The KATRIN experiment is an international project which is nearing the beginning of a tritium measurement campaign using a large electrostatic spectrumeter. This research included participation in KATRIN, including construction and delivery of a key calibration subsystem, the ``Rear Section''. To obtain sensitivity beyond KATRIN's, new techniques are required; this work included R&D on a new technique we call CRES (Cyclotron Resonance Electron Spectroscopy) which has promise to enable even more sensitive tritium decay measurements. We successfully carried out CRES spectroscopy in a model system in 2014, making an important step towards the design of a next-generation tritium experiment with new neutrino mass measurement abilities.
- Research Organization:
- Univ. of California, Santa Barbara, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Nuclear Physics (NP)
- DOE Contract Number:
- SC0004036
- OSTI ID:
- 1332868
- Report Number(s):
- NA; 6172309678; TRN: US1700741
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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