Molecular effects in tritium<i>β</i>decay. IV. Effect of crystal excitations on neutrino mass determination

Abstract

We have computed the excitation probabilities of the ${\mathrm{T}}_{2}$ molecules in the crystal surrounding the \ensuremath{\beta}-decaying tritium. The influence of this effect on the neutrino mass determination has been studied. For a neutrino mass of the order of a few eV the effect has been shown to be very important. Its importance decreases, however, with increasing neutrino mass. In addition we consider the influence of the high-energy portion (E&gt;164 eV) of the probability distribution on the neutrino mass.