The HUNTER experiment (Heavy Unseen Neutrinos from Total Energy-momentum Reconstruction) is a search for sterile neutrinos with masses in the 20-300 keV range. The experiment uses a combination of AMO, nuclear and particle physics techniques to do kinematically complete missing mass reconstruction of neutrinos from 131-Cs electron capture decays. A magneto-optically trap (MOT) of 131-Cs atoms provides a pure sample of ~10^8 radioactive atoms suspended in EUHV with no inert material present. Electrostatic spectrometers (“Reaction Ion Microscopes”) developed for study of chemical reaction kinematics allow the recoil 131-Xe ions and Auger electrons to be detected with very high resolution and respectively 4π (2π) solid angle acceptance. Large arrays of fast scintillators read out by silicon photomultiplier arrays detect the atomic x-rays. The system has sufficient overall resolution to reconstruct and sensitively detect neutrino missing mass in the above range. The experiment requires EUHV pressure, high precision and stability of the MOT and spectrometer fields, and precision in-situ alignment. Construction of HUNTER is well underway with some innovative solutions to these requirements.
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