Study of Background Processes in the Electrostatic Spectrometers of the KATRIN Experiment

The Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino Experiment KATRIN is designed to determine the neutrino mass with a sensitivity of 200 meV (90% C.L.). The focus of this work lies on the investigation of the main background sources at KATRIN: Muon induced background, background due to penning traps, and background arising from stored electrons. A novel method to eliminate the background arising from stored electrons, based on Electron Cyclotron Resonance, was experimentally tested in this work.