The MARE Project

The international project “Microcalorimeter Arrays for a Rhenium Experiment” (MARE) aims at a direct and calorimetric measurement of the electron antineutrino mass with sub-electronvolt sensitivity. MARE is divided in two phases. The first phase consists of two independent experiments using the presently available detector technology to reach a sensitivity of the order of 1 eV and to improve the understanding of the systematic uncertainties peculiar of this technique. In parallel to these experiments, a wide R&D program will single out the appropriate detector configuration, the read-out scheme and the large array technology for the second phase of MARE. In the second phase, the selected techniques will be applied to the realization of large arrays with as many as 10000 detectors each. At least five arrays will be then deployed to collect the statistics required to probe the antineutrino mass with a sensitivity of at least 0.2 eV, comparable to the one expected for the Katrin experiment (KATRIN Design Report, 2004).