•A cryogenic test facility for helium operation in forced-flow mode was built.•Helium at 4.5K and 20–70K, simultaneously, can be provided.•Test setup provides supply current up to 50kA DC and ...withstand voltage of 50kV DC.•The cryogenic, electrical and process control setup is described in detail.•Experiences during installation and commissioning are presented.
The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) has a longtime experience in the development of High Temperature Superconductor (HTS) Current Leads (CLs) for high currents leading to several contracts with national and international partners. Within these contracts series production and cold acceptance tests of such CLs were required. The cold test of a large number of CLs requires the availability of a flexible facility which allows fast and reproducible testing.
With the Current Lead Test Facility Karlsruhe (CuLTKa) a versatile and flexible test bed for CLs was designed and constructed. The facility consists of five cryostats including two test boxes and is directly connected by a transfer line to a refrigerator with a capacity of 2kW at 4.4K. The refrigerator supplies supercritical helium at two different temperature levels simultaneously. Each of the two test cryostats can be equipped with a pair of CLs which is short-circuited at the low temperature level via a superconducting bus bar. For current tests a power supply can provide DC currents up to 30kA. If required, the facility design offers the potential of withstanding high voltages of up to 50kV on the test objects.
The commissioning of the facility started in July 2014. In total a series of acceptance tests of the CLs for the Japanese JT-60SA will be carried out until second half of 2017 to qualify six CLs with a current of 26kA and 20 CLs with a current of 20kA. In the meantime, six CLs@26kA and 16 CLs@20kA have been tested in CuLTKa which demonstrates the very effective operation of the facility.
This paper describes the setup of the facility from cryogenic, electrical and process control point of view and will highlight the design of particular technical aspects. Furthermore, an overview of the performance during the commissioning phase will be given.
Abstract
Since the discovery of neutrino oscillations, we know that neutrinos have non-zero mass. However, the absolute neutrino-mass scale remains unknown. Here we report the upper limits on ...effective electron anti-neutrino mass,
m
ν
, from the second physics run of the Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino experiment. In this experiment,
m
ν
is probed via a high-precision measurement of the tritium
β
-decay spectrum close to its endpoint. This method is independent of any cosmological model and does not rely on assumptions whether the neutrino is a Dirac or Majorana particle. By increasing the source activity and reducing the background with respect to the first physics campaign, we reached a sensitivity on
m
ν
of 0.7 eV
c
–2
at a 90% confidence level (CL). The best fit to the spectral data yields
$${{\mbox{}}}{m}_{\nu }^{2}{{\mbox{}}}$$
m
ν
2
= (0.26 ± 0.34) eV
2
c
–4
, resulting in an upper limit of
m
ν
< 0.9 eV
c
–2
at 90% CL. By combining this result with the first neutrino-mass campaign, we find an upper limit of
m
ν
< 0.8 eV
c
–2
at 90% CL.
Abstract
The Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino (KATRIN) experiment is designed to measure a high-precision integral spectrum of the endpoint region of T
2
β decay, with the primary goal of probing the ...absolute mass scale of the neutrino. After a first tritium commissioning campaign in 2018, the experiment has been regularly running since 2019, and in its first two measurement campaigns has already achieved a sub-eV sensitivity. After 1000 days of data-taking, KATRIN’s design sensitivity is 0.2 eV at the 90% confidence level. In this white paper we describe the current status of KATRIN; explore prospects for measuring the neutrino mass and other physics observables, including sterile neutrinos and other beyond-Standard-Model hypotheses; and discuss research-and-development projects that may further improve the KATRIN sensitivity.
Abstract
In this work, we present the first spectroscopic measurements of conversion electrons originating from the decay of metastable gaseous
83m
Kr with the Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino (KATRIN) ...experiment. The obtained results represent one of the major commissioning milestones for the subsequent direct neutrino mass measurement with KATRIN. The successful campaign demonstrates the functionalities of the KATRIN beamline. Precise measurement of the narrow K-32, L
3
-32, and N
2,3
-32 conversion electron lines allowed to verify the eV-scale energy resolution of the KATRIN main spectrometer necessary for competitive measurement of the absolute neutrino mass scale.
In this work, we present the first spectroscopic measurements of conversion electrons originating from the decay of metastable gaseous 83mKr with the Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino (KATRIN) experiment. ...The obtained results represent one of the major commissioning milestones for the subsequent direct neutrino mass measurement with KATRIN. The successful campaign demonstrates the functionalities of the KATRIN beamline. Precise measurement of the narrow K-32, L3-32, and N2,3-32 conversion electron lines allowed to verify the eV-scale energy resolution of the KATRIN main spectrometer necessary for competitive measurement of the absolute neutrino mass scale.
The fact that neutrinos carry a non-vanishing rest mass is evidence of physics beyond the Standard Model of elementary particles. Their absolute mass bears important relevance from particle physics ...to cosmology. In this work, we report on the search for the effective electron antineutrino mass with the KATRIN experiment. KATRIN performs precision spectroscopy of the tritium \(\beta\)-decay close to the kinematic endpoint. Based on the first five neutrino-mass measurement campaigns, we derive a best-fit value of \(m_\nu^{2} = {-0.14^{+0.13}_{-0.15}}~\mathrm{eV^2}\), resulting in an upper limit of \(m_\nu < {0.45}~\mathrm{eV}\) at 90 % confidence level. With six times the statistics of previous data sets, amounting to 36 million electrons collected in 259 measurement days, a substantial reduction of the background level and improved systematic uncertainties, this result tightens KATRIN's previous bound by a factor of almost two.
The Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino (KATRIN) experiment is designed to measure a high-precision integral spectrum of the endpoint region of T2 beta decay, with the primary goal of probing the absolute ...mass scale of the neutrino. After a first tritium commissioning campaign in 2018, the experiment has been regularly running since 2019, and in its first two measurement campaigns has already achieved a sub-eV sensitivity. After 1000 days of data-taking, KATRIN's design sensitivity is 0.2 eV at the 90% confidence level. In this white paper we describe the current status of KATRIN; explore prospects for measuring the neutrino mass and other physics observables, including sterile neutrinos and other beyond-Standard-Model hypotheses; and discuss research-and-development projects that may further improve the KATRIN sensitivity.
In this work we present a keV-scale sterile-neutrino search with the first
tritium data of the KATRIN experiment, acquired in the commissioning run in
2018. KATRIN performs a spectroscopic ...measurement of the tritium $\beta$-decay
spectrum with the main goal of directly determining the effective electron
anti-neutrino mass. During this commissioning phase a lower tritium activity
facilitated the search for sterile neutrinos with a mass of up to $1.6\,
\mathrm{keV}$. We do not find a signal and set an exclusion limit on the
sterile-to-active mixing amplitude of down to $\sin^2\theta < 5\cdot10^{-4}$
($95\,\%$ C.L.), improving current laboratory-based bounds in the
sterile-neutrino mass range between 0.1 and $1.0\, \mathrm{keV}$.
Some extensions of the Standard Model of Particle Physics allow for Lorentz invariance and Charge-Parity-Time (CPT)-invariance violations. In the neutrino sector strong constraints have been set by ...neutrino-oscillation and time-of-flight experiments. However, some Lorentz-invariance-violating parameters are not accessible via these probes. In this work, we focus on the parameters \((a_{\text{of}}^{(3)})_{00}\), \((a_{\text{of}}^{(3)})_{10}\) and \((a_{\text{of}}^{(3)})_{11}\) which would manifest themselves in a non-isotropic beta-decaying source as a sidereal oscillation and an overall shift of the spectral endpoint. Based on the data of the first scientific run of the KATRIN experiment, we set the first limit on \(\left|(a_{\text{of}}^{(3)})_{11}\right|\) of \(< 3.7\cdot10^{-6}\) GeV at 90\% confidence level. Moreover, we derive new constraints on \((a_{\text{of}}^{(3)})_{00}\) and \((a_{\text{of}}^{(3)})_{10}\).
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