https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/i2010-10959-1
Special Article - Tools for Experiment and Theory
Effect of a sweeping conductive wire on electrons stored in a Penning-like trap between the KATRIN spectrometers
1
Institut für Kernphysik, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Münster, Germany
2
Institut für Physik, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Mainz, Germany
3
Helmholtz-Institut für Strahlen- und Kernphysik, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, Bonn, Germany
4
Institut für Experimentelle Kernphysik, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Münster, Germany
5
Research Institute for Particle and Nuclear Physics, Budapest, Hungary
6
Nuclear Physics Institute ASCR, Řež near Prague, Czech Republic
* e-mail: marcusb@uni-muenster.de
Received:
18
September
2009
Revised:
2
February
2010
Published online:
6
May
2010
The KATRIN experiment is going to search for the mass of the electron antineutrino down to 0.2eV/c 2. In order to reach this sensitivity the background rate has to be understood and minimised to 0.01 counts per second. One of the background sources is the unavoidable Penning-like trap for electrons due to the combination of the electric and magnetic fields between the pre- and the main spectrometer at KATRIN. In this article we will show that by sweeping a conducting wire periodically through such a particle trap stored particles can be removed, an ongoing discharge in the trap can be stopped, and the count rate measured with a detector looking at the trap is reduced.
© SIF, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, 2010
