KATRIN: Measuring the Mass Scale of Neutrinos

Over the past decade, experiments studying neutrinos from atmospheric, solar, and reactor sources have shown conclusively that neutrinos change flavor and, as a consequence, have a small but finite mass. However, the scale of neutrino masses remains an open question that is of great importance for many areas of physics. The most direct method to measure the neutrino mass scale is still via beta decay. The talk will focus primarily on the status of the KArlsruhe TRItium Neutrino experiment (KATRIN), currently under construction. KATRIN combines an ultra-luminous molecular windowless gaseous tritium source with a high-resolution integrating spectrometer to gain sensitivity to the absolute mass scale of neutrinos. The projected sensitivity of the experiment on the neutrino mass is 0.2 eV at 90\% C.L. In this talk I will discuss the status of the KATRIN experiment.