KATRIN: an experiment to determine the neutrino mass from the beta decay of tritium

Abstract

KATRIN is a very large scale tritium-beta-decay experiment to determine the mass of the neutrino. It is presently under construction at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology north campus, and makes use of the Karlsruhe Tritium Laboratory built as a prototype for the ITER project. The combination of a large retarding-potential electrostatic-magnetic spectrometer and an intense gaseous molecular tritium source makes possible a sensitivity to neutrino mass of 0.2 eV, about an order of magnitude below present laboratory limits. The measurement is kinematic and independent of whether the neutrino is Dirac or Majorana. The status of the project is summarized briefly in this report.