The absolute mass of neutrino and the first unique forbidden beta-decay of 187Re

Abstract

The planned rhenium beta-decay experiment MARE might probe the absolute mass scale of neutrinos with the same sensitivity as the tritium beta-decay experiment KATRIN, which will start data taking in 2011 and will proceed for five years. We present the energy distribution of emitted electrons for the first unique forbidden beta-decay of 187Re. It is found that the p-wave emission of electron dominates over the s-wave. By assuming mixing of three neutrinos the Kurie function for the rhenium beta-decay is derived. It is shown that the Kurie plot near the endpoint is within a good accuracy linear in the limit of massless neutrinos like the Kurie plot of the superallowed beta-decay of 3H.