Speaker
Description
The Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino (KATRIN) experiment is designed to determine the effective electron antineutrino mass with a nominal sensitivity of $0.2\,\mathrm{eV}c^{-2}$. This is achieved by a direct kinematic approach, where the mass square $m_\nu^2$ is inferred from the shape of the electron energy spectrum of molecular tritium beta decay. The unique experimental setup allows for high-precision beta spectroscopy, which is carried out in integral mode in the spectral endpoint ($E_0$) region, i.e. up to some tens of $\mathrm{eV}$ below $E_0\approx 18.6\,\mathrm{keV}$ (JINST 16 (2021) 08, T08015).
The range of $40\,\mathrm{eV}$ defines the scale of the accessible new physics. Light neutral pseudoscalars and vector bosons arise in many theories beyond the Standard Model (BSM). The couplings of such bosons to electrons and neutrinos are constrained from cosmological, astrophysical and laboratory observations. The high-statistics measurement of the tritium beta decay spectrum with KATRIN is a complementary probe for this type of new physics theories.
With such light bosons produced in tritium beta decay, the shape of the spectrum of electons is modified as described in JHEP 01 (2019) 206. In this poster the models featuring the light BSM bosons and the nature of their interaction are discussed and their imprint on the electron energy spectrum is considered. We estimate the sensitivity of the first KATRIN measurement campaigns to the new light boson couplings.
This work is supported by the Helmholtz Association, the Ministry for Education and Research BMBF (05A17PM3, 05A17PX3, 05A17VK2 and 05A17WO3), the Helmholtz Alliance for Astroparticle Physics (HAP) and the Helmholtz Initiative and Networking Fund (W2/W3-118).
| Collaboration / Activity | KATRIN Collaboration |
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