The HOLMES Experiment

The determination of the neutrino mass is an open issue in modern particle physics and astrophysics. The direct mass measurement is the only theory-unrelated experimental tool capable to probe such quantity. The HOLMES experiment will measure the end-point energy of the electron capture decay of $$^{163}$$163Ho, aiming at a statistical sensitivity on the neutrino mass around 1 eV/c$$^2$$2. In order to acquire the large needed statistics by keeping the pile-up contribution as low as possible, 1000 transition edge sensors will be readout simultaneously with the frequency domain readout, a multiplexing technique where the multiplex factor is only limited by the bandwidth of the available commercial fast digitizers. We outline here the HOLMES project with its technical challenges, and its status and perspectives.

[1]  M. Jensen,et al.  319 RADIOISOTOPE PRODUCTION AT THE HIGH FLUX REACTOR OF INSTITUT LAUE LANGEVIN , 2012 .

[2]  J. N. Ullom,et al.  Thermal Conductance Engineering for High-Speed TES Microcalorimeters , 2016 .

[3]  K. Blaum,et al.  Direct Measurement of the Mass Difference of $^{163}$Ho and $^{163}$Dy Solves the $Q$-Value Puzzle for the Neutrino Mass Determination , 2015, 1604.04210.

[4]  Robert Smith.  Ion Chromatography Applications , 1987 .

[5]  Dan Werthimer,et al.  A readout for large arrays of microwave kinetic inductance detectors. , 2012, The Review of scientific instruments.

[6]  G. Hilton,et al.  Development of the rf-SQUID Based Multiplexing System for the HOLMES Experiment , 2016 .

[7]  A. Giachero,et al.  Algorithms for Identification of Nearly-Coincident Events in Calorimetric Sensors , 2015, Journal of low temperature physics.

[8]  G. Hilton,et al.  HOLMES: The electron capture decay of 163Ho to measure the electron neutrino mass with sub-eV sensitivity , 2014, 1412.5060.

[9]  Joseph W. Fowler,et al.  High-resolution gamma-ray spectroscopy with a microwave-multiplexed transition-edge sensor array , 2013, 1310.7287.

[10]  K. Irwin.  An application of electrothermal feedback for high resolution cryogenic particle detection , 1995 .

[11]  B. Alpert,et al.  Pile-Up Discrimination Algorithms for the HOLMES Experiment , 2016 .

[12]  M. Biasotti,et al.  Transition-Edge Sensor Arrays of Microcalorimeters with $$^{163}$$163Ho for Direct Neutrino Mass Measurements with HOLMES , 2016 .

[13]  A. Rújula,et al.  Single electron ejection in electron capture as a tool to measure the electron neutrino mass , 1983 .

[14]  K. Blaum,et al.  The Electron Capture $$^{163}$$163Ho Experiment ECHo , 2013, 1309.5214.