Abstract
In this work, we present the first spectroscopic measurements of conversion electrons originating from the decay of metastable gaseous 83mKr with the Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino (KATRIN) experiment. The obtained results represent one of the major commissioning milestones for the subsequent direct neutrino mass measurement with KATRIN. The successful campaign demonstrates the functionalities of the KATRIN beamline. Precise measurement of the narrow K-32, L3-32, and N2,3-32 conversion electron lines allowed to verify the eV-scale energy resolution of the KATRIN main spectrometer necessary for competitive measurement of the absolute neutrino mass scale.
Highlights
The results of neutrino oscillation experiments have shown conclusively that neutrinos are massive particles [1,2,3]
We report on the results of gaseous 83mKr conversion electron measurements performed with the full Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino (KATRIN) beamline during the pre-tritium commissioning phase
We report on the relevant physical parameters of the conversion electron lines extracted from these spectra by means of a maximum likelihood analysis
Summary
The results of neutrino oscillation experiments have shown conclusively that neutrinos are massive particles [1,2,3]. While the experimental energy resolution is not good enough to resolve individual neutrino mass states, the observable extracted from the β-spectrum is the effective electron (anti)-neutrino mass squared. The KATRIN (KArlsruhe TRItium Neutrino) experiment is a next-generation tritium β-decay experiment designed to search for mβ with a sensitivity of 0.2 eV/c2 (90 % C.L.) and a 5σ discovery potential of mβ = 0.35 eV/c2 [9] It utilizes a highly luminous windowless gaseous tritium source and an electrostatic spectrometer with high resolution and large angular acceptance. We have obtained high-resolution spectra of conversion electron lines at the energies of 17.8 keV, 30.5 keV, and 32.1 keV This allowed us to assess the performance of the complete KATRIN setup over a broad range of energies and different natural line widths. In Ref. [22], generic uncertainty estimates are given for the recommended line widths: 5 % to 10 % for the K shell and 10 % to 30 % for the L3 subshell
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