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Improved Upper Limit on the Neutrino Mass from a Direct Kinematic Method by KATRIN.
We report on the neutrino mass measurement result from the first four-week science run of the Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino experiment KATRIN in spring 2019. Beta-decay electrons from a high-purity gaseous molecular tritium source are energy analyzed by a high-resolution MAC-E filter. A fit of the integrated electron spectrum over a narrow interval around the kinematic end point at 18.57 keV gives an effective neutrino mass square value of (-1.0_{-1.1}^{+0.9}) eV^{2}. From this, we derive an upper limit of 1.1 eV (90% confidence level) on the absolute mass scale of neutrinos. This value coincides with the KATRIN sensitivity. It improves upon previous mass limits from kinematic measurements by almost a factor of 2 and provides model-independent input to cosmological studies of structure formation
Precision measurement of the electron energy-loss function in tritium and deuterium gas for the KATRIN experiment
The KATRIN experiment is designed for a direct and model-independent
determination of the effective electron anti-neutrino mass via a high-precision
measurement of the tritium -decay endpoint region with a sensitivity on
of 0.2eV/c (90% CL). For this purpose, the -electrons
from a high-luminosity windowless gaseous tritium source traversing an
electrostatic retarding spectrometer are counted to obtain an integral spectrum
around the endpoint energy of 18.6keV. A dominant systematic effect of the
response of the experimental setup is the energy loss of -electrons from
elastic and inelastic scattering off tritium molecules within the source. We
determined the \linebreak energy-loss function in-situ with a pulsed
angular-selective and monoenergetic photoelectron source at various
tritium-source densities. The data was recorded in integral and differential
modes; the latter was achieved by using a novel time-of-flight technique.
We developed a semi-empirical parametrization for the energy-loss function
for the scattering of 18.6-keV electrons from hydrogen isotopologs. This model
was fit to measurement data with a 95% T gas mixture at 30K, as used in
the first KATRIN neutrino mass analyses, as well as a D gas mixture of 96%
purity used in KATRIN commissioning runs. The achieved precision on the
energy-loss function has abated the corresponding uncertainty of
[arXiv:2101.05253] in the KATRIN
neutrino-mass measurement to a subdominant level.Comment: 12 figures, 18 pages; to be submitted to EPJ
Improved eV-scale sterile-neutrino constraints from the second KATRIN measurement campaign
We present the results of the light sterile neutrino search from the second Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino (KATRIN) measurement campaign in 2019. Approaching nominal activity, 3.76×106 tritium β-electrons are analyzed in an energy window extending down to 40 eV below the tritium end point at E0=18.57 keV. We consider the 3ν+1 framework with three active and one sterile neutrino flavors. The analysis is sensitive to a fourth mass eigenstate m24≲1600 eV2 and active-to-sterile mixing |Ue4|2≳6×10−3. As no sterile-neutrino signal was observed, we provide improved exclusion contours on m24 and |Ue4|2 at 95% C.L. Our results supersede the limits from the Mainz and Troitsk experiments. Furthermore, we are able to exclude the large Δm241 solutions of the reactor antineutrino and gallium anomalies to a great extent. The latter has recently been reaffirmed by the BEST Collaboration and could be explained by a sterile neutrino with large mixing. While the remaining solutions at small Δm241 are mostly excluded by short-baseline reactor experiments, KATRIN is the only ongoing laboratory experiment to be sensitive to relevant solutions at large Δm241 through a robust spectral shape analysis
New Constraint on the Local Relic Neutrino Background Overdensity with the First KATRIN Data Runs
We report on the direct cosmic relic neutrino background search from the
first two science runs of the KATRIN experiment in 2019. Beta-decay electrons
from a high-purity molecular tritium gas source are analyzed by a
high-resolution MAC-E filter around the kinematic endpoint at 18.57 keV. The
analysis is sensitive to a local relic neutrino overdensity of 9.7e10 (1.1e11)
at a 90% (95%) confidence level. A fit of the integrated electron spectrum over
a narrow interval around the kinematic endpoint accounting for relic neutrino
captures in the Tritium source reveals no significant overdensity. This work
improves the results obtained by the previous kinematic neutrino mass
experiments at Los Alamos and Troitsk. We furthermore update the projected
final sensitivity of the KATRIN experiment to <1e10 at 90% confidence level, by
relying on updated operational conditions.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figure
Reduction of stored-particle background by a magnetic pulse method at the KATRIN experiment
The KATRIN experiment aims to determine the effective electron neutrino mass with a sensitivity of 0.2 eV/c2 (%90 CL) by precision measurement of the shape of the tritium β-spectrum in the endpoint region. The energy analysis of the decay electrons is achieved by a MAC-E filter spectrometer. A common background source in this setup is the decay of short-lived isotopes, such as 219Rn and 220Rn, in the spectrometer volume. Active and passive countermeasures have been implemented and tested at the KATRIN main spectrometer. One of these is the magnetic pulse method, which employs the existing air coil system to reduce the magnetic guiding field in the spectrometer on a short timescale in order to remove low- and high-energy stored electrons. Here we describe the working principle of this method and present results from commissioning measurements at the main spectrometer. Simulations with the particle-tracking software Kassiopeia were carried out to gain a detailed understanding of the electron storage conditions and removal processes
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