Project 8 – towards a radio frequency measurement of the neutrino mass

While neutrino flavour oscillations are a clear indication that neutrinos do have non-vanishing rest masses, their values have so far not been established experimentally. The state-of-the-art experiment KATRIN has recently set a limit for the effective electron neutrino mass at mβ < 1.1 eV/c² @ 90%CL. However, cosmological observations indicate that Σm𝜈 < 0.12eV/c², well below KATRINs final projected sensitivity at m_𝜈 < 0.2 meV/c². As the MAC-E filter technology employed in KATRIN can not be scaled easily, new technologies are required to measure the neutrino mass in the lab. Towards this goal, the Project 8 collaboration has established Cyclotron Radiation Emission Spectroscopy as a new experimental method. In a four phased approach, this technique is employed in precision endpoint spectroscopy on tritium. For the final stage of the experiment, an atomic tritium setup is envisioned that allows a sensitivity of m_𝜈 < 0.04 meV/c²