MPP Colloquium

The KATRIN experiment

by Prof. Susanne Mertens (Max Planck Institute for Physics)

Europe/Berlin
MPI Meeting rooms

MPI Meeting rooms

Description
The neutrino is one of the most fascinating particles of the Standard Model. While our understanding of the neutrino has changed dramatically over the past decade, some of its fundamental properties such as its nature and mass are still unknown. Moreover, it remains an open question whether or not there exists a right-handed partner of the known left-handed neutrino, a so-called sterile neutrino. The prime goal of the Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino (KATRIN) experiment is to directly probe the mass of neutrinos by measuring the tritium beta decay spectrum close to its endpoint. Its unprecedented source and spectrometer qualities, however, allow to extend its physics goal to also search sterile neutrinos. This extension requires a novel detector and read-out system with the capability of handling extremely high count rates, a very high energy resolution, and an extremely thin deadlayer. This talk will present the current status of the KATRIN experiment and the progress of the R&D towards a novel detector system.