Wochenübersicht

Since the discovery of neutrino oscillation we know that neutrinos have non-zero masses, but we do not know the absolute neutrino mass scale, which is as important for cosmology as for particle physics. The direct search for a non-zero neutrino mass from endpoint spectra of weak decays is complementary to the search for neutrinoless double beta-decay and analyses of cosmological data. Today the most stringent direct limits on the neutrino mass originate from investigations of the electron energy spectra of tritium beta-decay. The next generation experiment KATRIN, the Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino experiment, is improving the sensitivity from the tritium beta decay experiments at Mainz and Troitsk of 2 eV/c^2 by one order of magnitude probing the region relevant for structure formation in the universe. KATRIN uses a strong windowless gaseous molecular tritium source combined with a huge MAC-E-Filter as electron spectrometer. To achieve the sensitivity, KATRIN has been putting many technologies at their limits. The full 70m long setup has been successfully commissioned. From early 2019 on KATRIN is taking high statistics tritium data hunting for the neutrino mass. In this talk an introduction into the necessity to determine the neutrino mass and the status in the field will be given, followed by a detailed presentation of KATRIN and its results from the first KATRIN science run. The new results are already bringing KATRIN into the lead position of the field. In the outlook the perspectives of KATRIN for the coming years and new technologies in the field to potentially improve further the sensitivity on the neutrino mass will be presented.

Phosphatidylcholine (PC) lipids complexed with hyaluronan (HA) have been proposed to form strongly lubricating boundary layers at biosurfaces such as articular cartilage. Depending on the type of PC used, efficient lubrication with friction coefficients down to 10-4 under physiologically high pressures (~100 atm) have been observed. This was attributed to hydration lubrication, acting at the highly hydrated phosphocholine headgroups of the PC lipids, exposed at the liposome surfaces. Such hydration layers can sustain large compressions without water molecules being squeezed out from the gap between sliding surfaces. At the same time, the hydration shells can relax rapidly, ensuring a fluid like response under applied shear. This combination of low shear stresses while sliding under high normal stresses results in very low friction coefficients, an effect termed hydration lubrication. We use the surface force balance (SFB) to examine interactions between polymer layers, in particular how normal interactions and especially frictional interactions, are modified when PC liposomes are added surface in pure water and in aqueous salt solutions, mimicking the presence of macromolecules on the surface of cartilage.