THE KATRIN EXPERIMENT: STATUS AND OUTLOOK

The KATRIN experiment, presently under construction in Karlsruhe, Germany, will improve on previous laboratory limits on the neutrino mass by a factor of ten. KATRIN will use a high-activity, gaseous T₂ source and a very high-resolution spectrometer to measure the shape of the high-energy tail of the tritium-decay β spectrum. The shape measurement will also be sensitive to new physics, including sterile neutrinos and Lorentz violation. This report summarizes recent progress in the experiment.