We developed a simple small-scale experiment to measure the beta decay spectrum of 3H. The aim of this research is to investigate the presence of sterile neutrinos in the keV region. Tritium nuclei were embedded in a 1×1×1 cm3 LiF crystal from the 6Li(n,α)3H reaction. The energy of the beta electrons absorbed in the LiF crystal was measured with a magnetic microcalorimeter at 40 mK. We report a new method of sample preparation, experiments, and analysis of 3H beta measurements. The spectrum of a 10-hour measurement agrees well with the expected spectrum of 3H beta decay. The analysis results indicate that this method can be used to search for keV-scale sterile neutrinos.
@article{arxiv.2210.11108,
title = {A lab scale experiment for keV sterile neutrino search},
author = {Y. C. Lee and H. B. Kim and H. L. Kim and S. K. Kim and Y. H. Kim and D. H. Kwon and H. S. Lim and H. S. Park and K. R. Woo and Y. S. Yoon},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2210.11108},
year = {2022}
}