Conversion electrons used to monitor the energy scale of electron spectrometer near tritium endpoint - a simulation study

Abstract

Measurements of the endpoint region of the tritium beta-decay spectrum provides good possibility to determine neutrino mass. This, however, needs a perfect monitoring of the spectrometer energy scale. A parallel measurement of electron line of known energy - in particular the 83mKr conversion K-line - may serve well to this purpose. The 83Rb decaying to 83mKr seems to be a very suitable radioactive source due to its halflife of 86.2 day. In this work, we determine the amount of 83Rb which is necessary for a successful monitoring.