First results of the KATRIN experiment on an absolute neutrino mass measurement

Since the Nobel prize-winning discovery of neutrino oscillation, we know that neutrinos have a non-zero mass. However, the absolute mass scale of the most abundant matter particle in the Universe remains unknown. Three fundamentally different approaches aim to determine the neutrino mass: Global fits to cosmological data, neutrinoless double beta decay and kinematic measurements. The latter is the most direct way to determine the mass of the neutrino and is investigated with tritium beta decays in the Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino (KATRIN) experiment. KATRIN performs spectroscopy of beta-electrons near the tritium endpoint at 18.6 keV by employing a high intensity windowless gaseous tritium source and a high-precision electrostatic spectrometer based on the MAC-E filter principle. The required sensitivity demands novel hardware operating with unprecedented stability and a precise understanding of all systematic effects and their correlations. After a long time of construction, KATRIN performed its first measurement campaign in spring this year and is currently the only experiment capable of improving our knowledge of the neutrino mass in a model-independent way. In September, the first results were released. In this colloquium, I will present the KATRIN experiment and its kinematic measurement approach within the larger picture of neutrino mass measurements. I will then show the first results and the overall future potential.