Regensburg 2013 – scientific programme

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TT: Fachverband Tiefe Temperaturen

TT 12: Poster Session Superconductivity

TT 12.1: Poster

Monday, March 11, 2013, 15:00–19:00, Poster D

Detector development for a neutrino mass determination using the ¹⁶³Ho electron capture spectrum — •P. Ranitzsch, M. Wegner, S. Kempf, L. Gamer, J. Geist, D. Hengstler, M. Krantz, E. Pavlov, C. Pies, S. Schäfer, S. Uhl, T. Wolf, A. Fleischmann, C. Enss, and L. Gastaldo — Kirchhoff-Institute for Physics, Heidelberg University

The absolute scale of the neutrino mass eigenstates is one of the puzzles in modern particle physics and can be directly investigated using electroweak decays. In the context of the ECHO collaboration we are developing metallic magnetic calorimeters (MMCs) to be used with an internal ¹⁶³Ho source to measure its electron capture (EC) spectrum.

MMCs are calorimetric particle detectors with paramagnetic temperature sensor operated below 100 mK. The sensor converts the temperature rise of the detector, due to the absorption of an energetic particle, to a change of magnetization which is detected by a SQUID magnetometer. MMCs fulfill the requirements for cryogenic neutrino mass investigations, namely an energy resolution Δ E_FWHM below 2 eV and pulse formation times of τ<1 µ s, as recently obtained with micro-fabricated MMCs for soft X-ray detection.

We present the calorimetric measurement of the EC spectrum of ¹⁶³Ho obtained with our first detector prototype. We discuss the development of a 64 pixel array readout.