Measuring The Mass In The Neutrino One Atom At A Time

Measuring the mass in the neutrino one atom at the time

Giorgio Gratta
Stanford University

ABSTRACT:

With the definite evidence for neutrino oscillations collected in the last few years we now believe that neutrino masses are non-zero. Oscillation measurements, however, only measure mass differences and give us little information about the absolute values of neutrino masses.

The rare phenomenon of neutrinoless double-beta decay represents our best option to attempt measuring very small neutrino masses. I will describe a new type of double-beta decay experiment that, through the exploitation of nuclear and particle detector techniques, as well as atomic physics tools, will offer the possibility of very large, background free experiments.