Comissioning a first atomic tritium source

The Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino mass (KATRIN) experiment will Research a sensitivity below 0.3 eV/c2. In order to increase the sensitivity on the neutrino mass a new high resolution differential measurement method is required. The maximum effective resolution which can be achieved is not limited only by the detector, but also by molecular effects in the source gas constraining it to -0.9ex~1 eV FWHM for T2. Thus, future ultimate neutrino experiments need to use differential detectors combined with atomic tritium sources. Therefore, we move forward with the development of atomic tritium sources.

At the Tritium Laboratory Karlsruhe, a system to demonstrate the production of atomic tritium is currently being comissioned. A commercially available cracking system is used for hydrogen dissociation. For beam diagnostics, a quadrupole mass spectrometer equipped with a cross beam ion source is used.

In this talk, results from the comissioning of the system with non-radioactive gases like protium and deuterium are shown.