Status of the UCN τ experiment

Conference · Sun Dec 01 00:00:00 EST 2019

OSTI ID:1761726

Pattie, R. W. ^[1]; Bowman, James David  ^[2]; Broussard, Leah  ^[2]; Penttila, Seppo  ^[2]; Ramsey, John Clinton  ^[2]

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1. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL)
2. ORNL

The neutron is the simplest nuclear system that can be used to probe the structure of the weak interaction and search for physics beyond the standard model. Measurements of neutron lifetime and β-decay correlation coefficients with precisions of 0.02% and 0.1%, respectively, would allow for stringent constraints on new physics. The UCNτ experiment uses an asymmetric magneto-gravitational UCN trap with in situ counting of surviving neutrons to measure the neutron lifetime, τn = 877.7s (0.7s)stat (+0.4/-0.2s)sys. We discuss the recent result from UCNτ, the status of ongoing data collection and analysis, and the path toward a 0.25 s measurement of the neutron lifetime with UCNτ.

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Nuclear Physics (NP)
• DOE Contract Number: AC05-00OR22725
• OSTI ID: 1761726
• Resource Relation: Conference: International Workshop on Particle Physics at Neutron Sources (PPNS 2018) - Grenoble, France - 5/24/2018 4:00:00 AM-5/26/2018 4:00:00 AM
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English