UNC-CH PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY PRELIM
Kevin Wierman, UNC-CH
“Electron Optics in the KATRIN Main Spectrometer”
Experiments in recent years have shown neutrinos have non-zero rest mass in conflict with the current standard model of subatomic physics. The Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino experiment (KATRIN) will probe the electron neutrino mass using tritium beta decay. KATRIN’s main spectrometer will provide a 0.2eV sensitivity to the neutrino mass, an order of magnitude improvement over the previous generation of experiments. During KATRIN’s most recent commissioning phase, a mono-energetic electron source was used to measure transmission properties and study potential systematic errors in the main spectrometer. Understanding the main spectrometer will pave the path for KATRIN to proceed with future measurements and determine or restrict the absolute mass scale of neutrinos.