The St. Benedict Facility: Probing Fundamental Symmetries through Mixed Mirror $$β$$-Decays

Journal Article · 10 October 2023 · Atoms

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/atoms11100129 · OSTI ID:2246709

Porter, William Samuel  ^[1]; Bardayan, Daniel W. ^[1]; Brodeur, Maxime ^[1]; Burdette, Daniel P. ^[2]; Clark, Jason A. ^[3]; Gallant, Aaron T.  ^[4]; Houff, Alicen M. ^[1]; Kolata, James J. ^[1]; Liu, Biying ^[5]; O’Malley, Patrick D. ^[1]; Quick, Caleb ^[1]; Rivero, Fabio ^[1]; Savard, Guy ^[6]; Valverde, Adrian A. ^[2]; Zite, Regan ^[1]

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1. University of Notre Dame, IN (United States)
2. Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
3. Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States); Univ. of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB (Canada)
4. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
5. University of Notre Dame, IN (United States); Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
6. Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States); Univ. of Chicago, IL (United States)

Precise measurements of nuclear beta decays provide a unique insight into the Standard Model due to their connection to the electroweak interaction. These decays help constrain the unitarity or non-unitarity of the Cabibbo–Kobayashi–Maskawa (CKM) quark mixing matrix, and can uniquely probe the existence of exotic scalar or tensor currents. Of these decays, superallowed mixed mirror transitions have been the least well-studied, in part due to the absence of data on their Fermi to Gamow-Teller mixing ratios ($$ρ$$). At the Nuclear Science Laboratory (NSL) at the University of Notre Dame, the Superallowed Transition Beta-Neutrino Decay Ion Coincidence Trap (St. Benedict) is being constructed to determine the ρ for various mirror decays via a measurement of the beta–neutrino angular correlation parameter ($$α_{βν}$$) to a relative precision of 0.5%. In this work, we present an overview of the St. Benedict facility and the impact it will have on various Beyond the Standard Model studies, including an expanded sensitivity study of $$ρ$$ for various mirror nuclei accessible to the facility. A feasibility evaluation is also presented that indicates the measurement goals for many mirror nuclei, which are currently attainable in a week of radioactive beam delivery at the NSL.

• Research Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA); USDOE Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program; National Science Foundation (NSF)
• Grant/Contract Number: AC52-07NA27344
• OSTI ID: 2246709
• Report Number(s): LLNL--JRNL-853355; 1081197
• Journal Information: Atoms, Journal Name: Atoms Journal Issue: 10 Vol. 11; ISSN 2218-2004
• Publisher: MDPICopyright Statement
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English