Speaker
andrei puiu
(INFN)
Description
Measuring the neutrino mass is one of the most compelling challenges of modern physics.
HOLMES is a new experiment recently founded by the European Research Council to directly measure the neutrino mass. HOLMES will perform a calorimetric measurement of the energy released in the electron capture decay of 163Ho in order to reach a sensitivity as low as 0.4 eV on the neutrino mass. HOLMES will deploy a large array of low temperature microcalorimeters with implanted 163Ho nuclei in a Bismuth-Gold absorber coupled to a Transition Edge Sensor.
The R&D activities necessary to optimize the 163 Ho isotope production, the source embedding, the detector optimization and the multiplexed readout, are already in progress. We outline here the project with its technical challenges and perspectives.
Summary
HOLMES is a new experiment aiming to measure the electron neutrino mass from the electron capture decay spectrum of 163Ho with sub-eV sensitivity. In order to reach a sensitivity of 0.4 eV a large array of 1000 low temperature microcalorimeteres will be operated starting from 2016 for three years time.
Tags: HOLMES, neutrino mass direct measurement, 163 Ho electron capture.
Author
andrei puiu
(INFN)
