KATRIN Electroweak Interaction Research at the University of Washington

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Oscillation experiments, such as SNO have shown neutrinos have mass, but the question remains, "what is the absolute mass scale of neutrinos?" With a sensitivity of 0.2 eV (90% CL), KATRIN will be able to determine or limit the neutrino mass scale.

KATRIN looks for distortions in the integrated electron spectrum from tritium β decay. This kinematical method is a direct, model-independent measurement of neutrino mass.



The University of Washington has built and delivered the pre-spectrometer electrode and the pre-spectrometer data acquisition (DAQ) system. Current work includes detector background simulations and characterization of possible focal plane detector technologies. UW plans to provide the focal plane detector and the full data acquisition system.