The HOLMES Experiment

The determination of the neutrino mass is an open issue in modern particle physics and astrophysics. The direct mass measurement is the only theory-unrelated experimental tool capable to probe such quantity. The HOLMES experiment will measure the end-point energy of the electron capture decay of ^163 Ho, aiming at a statistical sensitivity on the neutrino mass around 1 eV/c ^2 . In order to acquire the large needed statistics by keeping the pile-up contribution as low as possible, 1000 transition edge sensors will be readout simultaneously with the frequency domain readout, a multiplexing technique where the multiplex factor is only limited by the bandwidth of the available commercial fast digitizers. We outline here the HOLMES project with its technical challenges, and its status and perspectives.