Regensburg 2010 – scientific programme

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TT: Fachverband Tiefe Temperaturen

TT 9: SC: Poster Session

TT 9.58: Poster

Monday, March 22, 2010, 14:00–18:00, Poster A

Low temperature detectors for direct neutrino mass measurements — •Jan-Patrick Porst, Falk v. Seggern, Andrea Kirsch, Loredana Gastaldo, Andreas Fleischmann, and Christian Enss — Kirchhoff-Institute for Physics, INF 227, 69120 Heidelberg

Presently one of the great challenges in neutrino physics is to determine the mass hierarchy of the neutrino mass eigenstates as well as the absolute values of the masses. The spectrum of a beta decay or an electron capture decay contains the mass information and is thus a main focus of studies in this field. Besides the already well established examination of the shape of the tritium beta spectrum with large scale spectrometers also other isotopes and experimental methods are under investigation. We present two promising experiments studying the beta decay of ¹⁸⁷Re and the electron capture decay of ¹⁶³Ho. Both isotopes have low Q-values and are therefore well suited for neutrino mass investigations. In both experiments the decay spectrum is measured calorimetrically with an energy resolution as high as Δ_FWHM=2 eV. Low temperature metallic magnetic calorimeters were developed and fabricated for these applications.

We present currently developed detector prototypes and results of characterization measurements. Furthermore, we discuss the sensitivity of future mid- or large-scale experiments on the neutrino mass assuming the presently achieved detector performance.