Determining the neutrino mass with cyclotron radiation emission spectroscopy—Project 8. (30th March 2017) - Esfahani, Ali Ashtari
Abstract: The most sensitive direct method to establish the absolute neutrino mass is observation of the endpoint of the tritium beta-decay spectrum. Cyclotron radiation emission spectroscopy (CRES) is a precision spectrographic technique that can probe much of the unexplored neutrino mass range with  ( eV ) resolution. A lower bound of m ( ν e ) ≳ 9 ( 0.1 ) meV is set by observations of neutrino oscillations, while the KATRIN experiment—the current-generation tritium beta-decay experiment that is based on magnetic adiabatic collimation with an electrostatic (MAC-E) filter—will achieve a sensitivity of m ( ν e ) ≲ 0.2 eV . The CRES technique aims to avoid the difficulties in scaling up a MAC-E filter-based experiment to achieve a lower mass sensitivity. In this paper we review the current status of the CRES technique and describe Project 8, a phased absolute neutrino mass experiment that has the potential to reach sensitivities down to m ( ν e ) ≲ 40 meV using an atomic tritium source.