Speaker
Description
The design of the KATRIN experiment was based on the successful predecessor experiments in Mainz and Troitsk, which collected data in the 1990s and early 2000s. While both experiments used the same principle for analyzing the energy of tritium decay electrons — the MAC-E filter — the tritium sources were of very different types.
In Troitsk, a gaseous molecular tritium source was used, a concept previously employed by the group in Los Alamos; in Mainz, a novel concept was employed, namely a quench-condensed molecular tritium source at temperatures as low as 1.9 K. Although the quench-condensed source requires 100,000 times less tritium than the gaseous source to achieve a similar luminosity, and handling is therefore much simpler, the KATRIN experiment opted for a gaseous source due to an effect discovered by the Mainz group in 1997—the self-charging of quench-condensed tritium films. This contribution serves as a reminder of the Effect, published in 2003, and its impact on neutrino mass measurements.
| Collaboration or Other Affiliation | KATRIN |
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