Daemons, the "Troitsk anomaly" in tritium beta spectrum, and the KATRIN experiment

Abstract

The "Troitsk anomaly" is a strange bump at the end of the tritium beta spectrum observed in electron antineutrino mass measurements. It reveals a half-year variation. The nature of the anomaly can be accounted for by interaction of negative DArk Electric Matter Objects - daemons detected by us with the Nb-containing superconducting coils of the gaseous tritium source of the setup. In crossing the system, the daemons, whose flux varies with a half-year period, drag away Nb-containing clusters and excite their nuclei and electronic shells to produce emission of five Auger electron lines within E = 18566-18572 eV. This yields an estimate for the daemon flux ~10-7-10-6 cm-2s-1. It is shown that in the KATRIN system (KArlsruhe TRItium Neutrino experiment) presently under construction the ratio of the daemon-stimulated Auger bump signal to the useful beta-signal should be larger than that in the Troitsk experiment. The potential of using slightly modified systems at Troitsk and Karlsruhe to study the daemons is pointed out.