UCNτ: Recent Improvements, Current Status, and Outlook

The UCNτ collaboration recently measured the free neutron lifetime τ_n to a relative precision of 0.04% by confining ultracold neutrons (UCN) without material interactions via a magnetic plus gravitational trapping potential and utilizing a novel in situ detector. This measurement reached, for the first time, a level of precision sufficient to probe the current theoretical understanding of neutron decay. However, further improvements in precision are necessary to decouple Standard Model tests from theoretical uncertainties associated with nuclear structure corrections. Throughout the last several run cycles at Los Alamos National Laboratory, continued evaluation of systematics and refinements to our experimental techniques, in particular ongoing detector development and improvements to our normalization strategy, have demonstrated that the experiment is still operating in a statistics-limited regime. The current status of and outlook for the UCNτ experiment will be discussed in light of these advances.