TY - JOUR
T1 - Direct measurements of neutrino mass
AU - Formaggio, Joseph A.
AU - de Gouvêa, André Luiz C.
AU - Robertson, R. G.Hamish
N1 - Funding Information:
We wish to express our thanks to Martin Fertl, Stephan Friedrich, Loredana Gastaldo, David Kaiser, Kyle Leach, Angelo Nucciotti, Walter Pettus, Alan Poon, Valérian Sibille, Martin Slezák, Thomas Thümmler, and Brent VanDevender for valuable discussions and materials for this report. The work of AdG is supported in part by the DOE Office of Science, USA award #DE-SC0010143, the work of JAF is supported in part by DOE Office of Science award #DE-SC0011091, and the work of RGHR is supported in part by DOE Office of Science award #DE-FG02-97ER41020.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2021/6/3
Y1 - 2021/6/3
N2 - The turn of the 21st century witnessed a sudden shift in our fundamental understanding of particle physics. While the minimal Standard Model predicts that neutrino masses are exactly zero, the discovery of neutrino oscillations proved the Standard Model wrong. Neutrino oscillation measurements, however, shed light neither on the scale of neutrino masses, nor on the mechanism by which those are generated. The neutrino mass scale is most directly accessed by studying the energy spectrum generated by beta decay or electron capture — a technique dating back to Enrico Fermi's formulation of radioactive decay. In this Article, we review the methods and techniques – both past and present – aimed at measuring neutrino masses kinematically. We focus on recent experimental developments that have emerged in the past decade, overview the spectral refinements that are essential in the treatment of the most sensitive experiments, and give a simple yet effective protocol for estimating the sensitivity. Finally, we provide an outlook of what future experiments might be able to achieve.
AB - The turn of the 21st century witnessed a sudden shift in our fundamental understanding of particle physics. While the minimal Standard Model predicts that neutrino masses are exactly zero, the discovery of neutrino oscillations proved the Standard Model wrong. Neutrino oscillation measurements, however, shed light neither on the scale of neutrino masses, nor on the mechanism by which those are generated. The neutrino mass scale is most directly accessed by studying the energy spectrum generated by beta decay or electron capture — a technique dating back to Enrico Fermi's formulation of radioactive decay. In this Article, we review the methods and techniques – both past and present – aimed at measuring neutrino masses kinematically. We focus on recent experimental developments that have emerged in the past decade, overview the spectral refinements that are essential in the treatment of the most sensitive experiments, and give a simple yet effective protocol for estimating the sensitivity. Finally, we provide an outlook of what future experiments might be able to achieve.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.physrep.2021.02.002
DO - 10.1016/j.physrep.2021.02.002
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:85102421396
VL - 914
SP - 1
EP - 54
JO - Physics Reports
JF - Physics Reports
SN - 0370-1573
ER -