MARE, Microcalorimeter Arrays for a Rhenium Experiment: A detector overview

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nima.2006.10.198Get rights and content

Abstract

We describe and discuss the features of MARE, an experiment based on arrays of rhenium low temperature microcalorimeters that have the potential to bring the sensitivity to the neutrino mass down to 0.2 eV, by studying the beta spectrum of Re187 (Q-value = 2.47 keV).

Section snippets

The physics case

Single beta decay is the only laboratory measurement that can determine the neutrino mass scale in a fully model independent approach. Neutrino mass is extracted by studying the shape of the beta spectrum in a region close to the end point Q. The parameter which is actually inferred from the measurement is mν2=i=13|Uei|2mi2, where Uei are the elements of the first row of the neutrino mixing matrix. Presently, the upper bound on mν is 2.2 eV, provided by the MAINZ and TROITZK [1] experiments,

MARE-1: a 2 eV neutrino mass experiment

The specific beta activity of natural rhenium (of the order of 1 Bq/mg), is ideally tailored to low temperature microcalorimeters, detectors consisting of a Re-based energy absorber and a sensitive thermometer which converts the temperature increase induced by a single beta decay into an electrical signal. In an experiment based on microcalorimeter arrays, the statistical sensitivity to neutrino mass Σ(mν) scales as (ΔE/Nev)1/4. Large progresses in sensitivities can be attained acting mainly on

Technologies for MARE-2

The sensitivity goal of 0.2 eV envisaged for MARE-2 requires a further increase of statistics up to 1014 beta events, with a moderate improvement of the energy resolution. In order to keep the total numbers of elements at a reasonable level (of the order of 50000–100 000), a substantial increase of the single element mass is foreseen (up to 1–5 mg). This requires that TR be reduced down to 1–10μs, in order to keep the pile-up fraction around 10-5. This very demanding performance may require new

References (7)

  • arXiv:hep-ex/0109033...
  • E. Cosulich

    Nucl. Phys. A

    (1995)
  • G. Hilton

    IEEE Trans. Appl. Supercond.

    (2001)
There are more references available in the full text version of this article.

Cited by (38)

  • Beta spectrum of unique first-forbidden decays as a novel test for fundamental symmetries

    2017, Physics Letters, Section B: Nuclear, Elementary Particle and High-Energy Physics
  • Absolute neutrino mass scale

    2013, Nuclear Physics B - Proceedings Supplements
  • Towards the detection of light and heavy relic neutrinos

    2011, Progress in Particle and Nuclear Physics
  • Tritium and rhenium as a probe of cosmic neutrino background

    2011, Journal of Physics G: Nuclear and Particle Physics
View all citing articles on Scopus
View full text