A novel detector system for KATRIN to search for keV-scale sterile neutrinos

Understand

Sterile neutrinos are a minimal extension of the Standard Model of Particle Physics.

• If their mass is in the kilo-electron-volt regime, they are viable dark matter candidates.
• One way to search for sterile neutrinos in a laboratory-based experiment is via tritium-beta decay, where the new neutrino mass eigenstate would manifest itself as a kink-like distortion of the $\beta$-decay spectrum.
• The objective of the TRISTAN project is to extend the KATRIN setup with a new multi-pixel silicon drift detector system to search for a keV-scale sterile neutrino signal.