Speaker
Description
The PTOLEMY experiment is designed to search for the most elusive relics of the Big Bang—the cosmic neutrino background—via neutrino capture on tritium. As a key intermediate objective, the collaboration is developing the PTOLEMY demonstrator to perform a direct measurement of the absolute neutrino mass, addressing one of the outstanding open questions in particle physics and cosmology. PTOLEMY combines a novel compact electromagnetic filter, radio-frequency tracking, and precision energy readout using transition-edge sensors. Recent progress in tritium-on-graphene source development and ultra-low background instrumentation has opened a new sensitivity frontier. Simulations and initial hardware results suggest that PTOLEMY can reach a mass sensitivity below 200 meV with only microgram-scale tritium targets, potentially matching or exceeding the performance of current-generation experiments. In this talk, I will present the latest developments of the PTOLEMY demonstrator, outline the path toward first physics results in neutrino mass measurement, and discuss the broader implications for relic neutrino detection.
