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

• Published in: arXiv.org
• Main Authors: Mertens, Susanne, Alborini, Antonio, Altenmüller, Konrad, Bode, Tobias, Bombelli, Luca, Brunst, Tim, Carminati, Marco, Fink, David, Fiorini, Carlo, Houdy, Thibaut, Huber, Anton, Korzeczek, Marc, Lasserre, Thierry, Lechner, Peter, Manotti, Michele, Peric, Ivan, Radford, David C, Siegmann, Daniel, Slezák, Martin, Valerius, Kathrin, Wolf, Joachim, Wüstling, Sascha
• Format: Paper Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Ithaca Cornell University Library, arXiv.org 15.10.2018
• Subjects: Beta decay; Dark matter; Eigenvectors; Neutrinos; Particle physics; Physics - Instrumentation and Detectors; Pixels; Searching; Sensors; Standard model (particle physics); Tritium
• ISSN: 2331-8422
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.1810.06711

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.