Two old ways to measure the electron-neutrino mass

Abstract

Three decades ago, the measurement of the electron neutrino mass in atomic electron capture (EC) experiments was scrutinized in its two variants: single EC and neutrino-less double EC. For certain isotopes an atomic resonance enormously enhances the expected decay rates. The favoured technique, based on calorimeters as opposed to spectrometers, has the advantage of greatly simplifying the theoretical analysis of the data. After an initial surge of measurements, the EC approach did not seem to be competitive. But very recently, there has been great progress on micro-calorimeters and the measurement of atomic mass differences. Meanwhile, the beta-decay neutrino-mass limits have improved by a factor of 15, and the difficulty of the experiments by the cube of that figure. Can the "calorimetric" EC theory cope with this increased challenge? I answer this question affirmatively. In so doing I briefly review the subject and extensively address some persistent misunderstandings of the underlying quantum physics.