Dresden 2006 – scientific programme

Parts | Days | Selection | Search | Downloads | Help

TT: Tiefe Temperaturen

TT 7: Superconductivity & Solids At Low Temperature - Poster Session

TT 7.54: Poster

Monday, March 27, 2006, 14:00–17:45, P1

Magnetic calorimeters for a direct neutrino mass measurement using ¹⁸⁷Re β decay — •Loredana Gastaldo¹, Daniel Haug¹, Markus Linck¹, Andreas Burck¹, Hannes Rotzinger¹, Andreas Fleischmann¹, Christian Enss¹, Viatcheslav Zakosarenko², Ronny Stolz², Jürgen Kunert², and Hans-Georg Meyer² — ¹Kirchhoff Institute for Physics, Im Neuenheimer Feld 227, D-69120 Heidelberg, Germany — ²Institute for Physical High Technology, Albert-Einstein-Str. 9, D-07745 Jena, Germany

Metallic magnetic calorimeters (MMC) with Au:Er sensors are used as particle detectors in several research fields like absolute activity measurements of radioactive isotopes, high resolution x-ray spectroscopy and material analysis. The typical energy resolution of MMCs is in the range of few eV at 6 keV, which makes them promising candidates to detect the electrons emitted by ¹⁸⁷Re, whose end point energy of the continuous spectrum is about 2.5 keV. The analysis of the ¹⁸⁷Re spectrum is nowadays the only competitive technique for direct neutrino mass search besides KATRIN (KArlsruhe TRItium Neutrino experiment) investigating tritium β decay. The work presented describes the development of a MMC configuration that is suitable to detect the β decays occurring in a superconducting rhenium absorber. The detector is based on a gradiometric SQUID with integrated meander-shaped pickup coil. We discuss the general performance of the detector, the thermalization times, the noise contributions and the observed energy resolution.