Deconvolution of the energy loss function of the KATRIN experiment

One of the important systematic uncertainties of such an experiment are due to energy losses of β-decay electrons by elastic and inelastic scattering off tritium molecules within the source volume which alter the shape of the measured spectrum. To correct for these effects an independent measurement of the corresponding energy loss function is required. In this work we describe a deconvolution method to extract the energy loss function from measurements of the response function of the experiment at different column densities of the WGTS using a monoenergetic electron source.