Speaker
Dr
Angelo Nucciotti
(Dipartimento di Fisica dell'Università di Milano-Bicocca / INFN Sezione di Milano-Bicocca)
Description
The European Research Council has recently funded HOLMES, a new experiment to
directly measure the neutrino mass. HOLMES will perform a calorimetric
measurement of the energy released in the decay of 163Ho. The calorimetric
measurement eliminates systematic uncertainties arising from the use of external
beta sources, as in experiments with beta spectrometers. This measurement was
proposed in 1982 by A. De Rujula and M. Lusignoli, but only recently the
detector technological progress allowed to design a sensitive experiment. HOLMES
will deploy a large array of low temperature microcalorimeters with implanted
163Ho nuclei. The resulting mass sensitivity will be as low as 0.4eV. HOLMES
will be an important step forward in the direct neutrino mass measurement with a
calorimetric approach as an alternative to spectrometry. It will also establish
the potential of this approach to extend the sensitivity down to 0.1eV. We
outline here the project with its technical challenges and perspectives.
Primary author
Dr
Angelo Nucciotti
(Dipartimento di Fisica dell'Università di Milano-Bicocca / INFN Sezione di Milano-Bicocca)