2013/05/21 by A. De Rújula, De Rújula, A. · 1 citation
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research #DNA and Nucleic Acid Chemistry #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Experiment (hep-ex) #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #Molecular Junctions and Nanostructures #hep-ex #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1305.4857
11 pages. 17 figures
arxiv created 2013/05/21 · openalex publication_date 2013/05/21 · arxiv updated 2013/05/22 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Three decades ago, the measurement of the electron neutrino mass in atomic electron capture (EC) experiments was scrutinized in its two variants: single EC and neutrino-less double EC. For certain isotopes an atomic resonance enormously enhances the expected decay rates. The favoured technique, based on calorimeters as opposed to spectrometers, has the advantage of greatly simplifying the theoretical analysis of the data. After an initial surge of measurements, the EC approach did not seem to be competitive. But very recently, there has been great progress on micro-calorimeters and the measurement of atomic mass differences. Meanwhile, the beta-decay neutrino-mass limits have improved by a factor of 15, and the difficulty of the experiments by the cube of that figure. Can the "calorimetric" EC theory cope with this increased challenge? I answer this question affirmatively. In so doing I briefly review the subject and extensively address some persistent misunderstandings of the underlying quantum physics.