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arXiv · 1810.06711

A novel detector system for KATRIN to search for keV-scale sterile neutrinos

Susanne Mertens·Antonio Alborini·Konrad Altenmüller·Tobias Bode·Luca Bombelli·Tim Brunst·Marco Carminati·David Fink·Carlo Fiorini·Thibaut Houdy·Anton Huber·Marc Korzeczek·Thierry Lasserre·Peter Lechner·Michele Manotti·Ivan Peric·David C. Radford·Daniel Siegmann·Martin Slezák·Kathrin Valerius·Joachim Wolf·Sascha Wüstling
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Abstract

Sterile neutrinos are a minimal extension of the Standard Model of Particle Physics. If their mass is in the kilo-electron-volt regime, they are viable dark matter candidates. One way to search for sterile neutrinos in a laboratory-based experiment is via tritium-beta decay, where the new neutrino mass eigenstate would manifest itself as a kink-like distortion of the $\beta$-decay spectrum. The objective of the TRISTAN project is to extend the KATRIN setup with a new multi-pixel silicon drift detector system to search for a keV-scale sterile neutrino signal. In this paper we describe the requirements of such a new detector, and present first characterization measurement results obtained with a 7-pixel prototype system.

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Susanne Mertens, Antonio Alborini, Konrad Altenmüller, Tobias Bode, Luca Bombelli, Tim Brunst, Marco Carminati, David Fink, Carlo Fiorini, Thibaut Houdy, Anton Huber, Marc Korzeczek, Thierry Lasserre, Peter Lechner, Michele Manotti, Ivan Peric, David C. Radford, Daniel Siegmann, Martin Slezák, Kathrin Valerius, Joachim Wolf, Sascha Wüstling. 2018-10-15. A novel detector system for KATRIN to search for keV-scale sterile neutrinos. https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6471%2Fab12fe

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