Apr 13 – 16, 2026
KIT Campus South
Europe/Berlin timezone

Extended range measurement of the KATRIN energy loss function up to 200 eV

Apr 13, 2026, 5:19 PM
2m
Gaede Foyer (KIT Campus South)

Gaede Foyer

KIT Campus South

2nd floor (in front of Gaede-Lecture theater) Physikflachbau Building 30.22 Engesserstraße 7 76131 Karlsruhe
Poster Posters

Speaker

Justus Beisenkötter (Uni Münster)

Description

The KATRIN experiment aims to determine the mass of the neutrino by scanning the electron energy spectrum near the endpoint. However, electrons can scatter off tritium molecules in the source of the experiment and lose energy in the process. Therefore, the energy loss function, i.e. the probability for an electron to loose a certain amount of energy in a scattering reaction, must be measured with high precision. A monoenergetic and monoangular photoelectron source mounted in the rear section of the KATRIN beamline is used to determine this function in dedicated experimental runs using both a time-of-flight and an integral measurement method.
While previous measurements covered energy losses up to 60 eV, corresponding to the region of interest for neutrino mass fits, this poster will present energy-loss results from measurements in an extended range of up to 200 eV energy loss, which is relevant for the analysis of regular column density measurements performed at the KATRIN tritum source. With this data, we developed a preliminary energy loss model for electron scattering off tritium molecules up to 200 eV surplus energy that also includes the effect of non-Poissonian scattering probabilities.
This work is supported by BMFTR under the contract number 05A23PMA

Collaboration or Other Affiliation KATRIN

Author

Justus Beisenkötter (Uni Münster)

Co-authors

Dr Sonja Schneidewind Dr Volker Hannen Dr Rudolf Sack Richard Salomon Prof. Christian Weinheimer

Presentation materials