At the 2019 Topics in Astroparticle and Underground Physics conference in Toyama, Japan, leaders from the KATRIN experiment reported on Friday that the estimated range for the rest mass of the neutrino is no larger than 1 electron volt, or eV. These inaugural results obtained earlier this year by the Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino experiment — or KATRIN — cut the mass range for the neutrino by more than half by lowering the upper limit of the neutrino’s mass from 2 eV to 1 eV.
The University of Washington is a major partner in the KATRIN experiment. Under Hamish Robertson, a UW professor in the Department of Physics, the UW became one of KATRIN’s founding member institutions in 2001. KATRIN scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Carnegie Mellon University began their involvement with the project while at the UW. In addition to Robertson, other current UW scientists working on the KATRIN experiment are research professor of physics Peter Doe, research associate professor of physics Sanshiro Enomoto and Menglei Sun, a postdoctoral researcher in the UW Center for Experimental Nuclear Physics and Astrophysics.
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KATRIN cuts the mass estimate for the elusive neutrino in half
Submitted by Shane D Debolt on September 23, 2019 - 9:19am