Speaker
Description
An atomic tritium source is a key component of the Project 8 experiment, which targets a neutrino mass sensitivity of 40 meV. This atomic source is critical to overcome the statistical and systematic limitations inherent to molecular tritium sources, which have been employed by prior experiments. The source begins with a high flux (~10$^{19}$ atoms/sec) dissociator, with both thermal cracker and RF plasma concepts under investigation. Initial cooling down to 10’s K will be achieved by surface collisions, followed by a magnetic evaporative cooling beamline to reach mK temperature. Finally, atoms will be confined in the decay and detection region by means of a high-multipole magnetic trap. In this poster, we outline the atomic source system and present current work on key subsystems.