Status of the KATRIN Experiment

The Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino (KATRIN) experiment investigates the effective electron anti-neutrino mass with tritium beta decays at a sensitivity of 0.2 eV (90% CL). This measurement approach to probe the neutrino mass scale is model independent, unlike cosmological fits or neutrinoless double beta decay experiments. The KATRIN experiment 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. The experiment has been under extensive commissioning and first tritium was injected in May 2018. In this talk, the principle and experimental challenges of the neutrino mass measurement with KATRIN, as well as the current status of the experiment, will be presented.