Münster 2017 – scientific programme
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HK: Fachverband Physik der Hadronen und Kerne
HK 43: Astroparticle Physics II
HK 43.2: Group Report
Thursday, March 30, 2017, 14:30–15:00, F 073
Status and commissioning of the KATRIN experiment — •Philipp Ranitzsch for the KATRIN collaboration — Institut für Kernphysik, Universität Münster
The goal of the KArlsruhe TRItium Neutrino experiment (KATRIN) is to investigate the neutrino mass with a sensitivity of 0.2 eV/c2 by a high-resolution and high-statistics measurement of the end-point region of the 3H β-spectrum. For this task it uses an experimental setup made of two main parts, firstly a source and transport section including a windowless gaseous tritium source, a differential and a cryogenic pumping section. This system provides a clean current of 3H β-electrons that are analyzed and detected in the second part, namely the spectrometer and detector section. The latter section consists of two electrostatic spectrometers based on the MAC-E filter technique and a multi-pixel silicon semiconductor detector.
At the experimental site at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), all major components have arrived in summer 2015 and the complete beam line has been assembled. The inauguration of the full beam line, the “First Light”, took place in October 2016 and was followed by a “First Light Plus” commissioning campaign, that finished in December 2016.
This talk gives an overview of the current status of the KATRIN experiment, focusing on the recent “First Light Plus” campaign and the upcoming steps towards the first tritium measurements.
The work of the author is supported by BMBF Verbundforschung under contract 05A14PMA.