Updates from KATRIN on neutrino mass measurements

The Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino (KATRIN) experiment probes the electron neutrino mass with measurements of the tritium beta decay spectrum. High-precision spectroscopy is performed near the endpoint at 18.6 keV by employing a windowless gaseous tritium source and an electrostatic spectrometer based on the MAC-E filter principle. This approach allows a model-independent measurement of the neutrino mass with a design sensitivity of 0.2 eV (90% CL). The method is complementary to model-dependent measurements in cosmology and neutrinoless double beta decay experiments.

The required sensitivity demands high stability of hardware components, a precise understanding of systematic effects, and a low background. The commissioning of the system was completed in 2019 followed by the first data release. Recently, the second dataset was pusblished and will be presented in this talk. In the meanwhile, significantly more data was recorded in a new spectrometer configuration. The status of the ongoing analyses will be reported.