Speaker: Gianluca Cavoto (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare)

Background (CνB) decoupled, which has been for a long time a dream in the field of Cosmology.

The PTOLEMY detection principle relies on CνB capture on a target of beta-unstable elements, since in this process mono-energetic electrons are emitted just above the beta-decay endpoint.

The extremely low cross section imposes a large target mass resulting in a prohibitive rate of background events. For this reason a novel concept dynamic electromagnetic-filter, capable of selecting electrons in the region of interest has been developed. The usage of beta-unstable element, as target, imposes an extreme energy resolution to disentangle electrons from beta-decays from those emitted in the case of neutrino capture. This makes a possible detector of relic neutrinos a perfect instrument to measure neutrino mass. The neutrino mass measurement has the advantage that can be achieved with much less target mass while the technology for relic neutrino detection is being validated.

The status of the on-going R&D efforts towards a full demonstrator being assembled at INFN LNGS is discussed