Recent neutrino mass experiments at Mainz and Troitsk using tritium β-decay have reached their sensitivity potential, yielding upper limits of about 2 eV/c for m(ν̄e). The KArlsruhe TRItium Neutrino experiment (KATRIN), designed to reach a sensitivity of m(ν̄e) = 0.2 eV/c 2 (90% C.L.), will improve the signal rate by a factor of about 100 with respect to previous experiments while maintaining the...

A new method for ion extraction from an anharmonic electrostatic trap is introduced. Anharmonicity is a common feature of electrostatic traps which can be used for small scale spatial confinement of ions, and this feature is also necessary for autoresonant ion extraction. With the aid of ion trajectory simulations, novel autoresonant trap mass spectrometers (ART-MSs) have been designed based on...