Fill and dump measurement of the neutron lifetime using an asymmetric magneto-gravitational trap

ORAL

Abstract

The past two decades have yielded several new measurements and reanalysis of older measurements of the neutron lifetime. These have led to a 4.4 standard deviation discrepancy between the most precise measurements of the neutron decay rate producing protons in cold neutron beams and the most precise lifetime measured in neutron storage experiments. Measurements using different techniques are important for investigating whether there are unidentified systematic effects in any of the measurements. In this paper we report a new measurement using the Los Alamos asymmetric magneto- gravitational trap where the surviving neutrons are counted external to the trap using the fill and dump method. The new measurement gives a free neutron lifetime of tn=877.1(2.6)stat(0.8)syst. Although this measurement is not as precise, it is in statistical agreement with previous results using in situ counting in the same apparatus.

*This work is supported by the LANL LDRD program; the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Nuclear Physics under Awards No. DE-FG02-ER41042, No. DE-AC52-06NA25396, No. DE-AC05- 00OR2272, and No. 89233218CNA000001 under proposal LANLEEDM; NSF Grants No. 1614545, No. 1914133, No. 1506459, No. 1553861, No. 1812340, No. 1714461, No. 2110898, and No. 1913789; and NIST precision measurements grant.

–

Publication: arXiv preprint arXiv:2205.02323

Presenters

  • Christopher L Morris

    • Los Alamos Natl Lab

Authors

  • Christopher L Morris

    • Los Alamos Natl Lab

  • Chris Cude-Woods

    • Los Alamos National Laboratory

  • Francisco M Gonzalez

    • ORNL
    • Oak Ridge National Laboratory

  • Eric M Fries

    • Caltech

  • Thomas L Bailey

    • Notre Dame Physics
    • University of Notre Dame

  • Marie A Blatnik

    • Caltech

  • Nathan B Callahan

    • Indiana University Bloomington

  • Jin H Choi

    • North Carolina State University

  • Steven Clayton

    • Los Alamos Natl Lab

  • Scott A Currie

    • Los Alamos National Laboratory

  • Maria Dawid

    • University of Indiana

  • Bradley Filippone

    • Caltech

  • Walt R Fox

    • Indiana University

  • Peter Geltenbort

    • Institut Laue-Langevin

  • Leendert Hayen

    • North Carolina State University

  • Kevin P Hickerson

    • Caltech

  • Mark A Hoffbauer

    • Los Alamos Natl Lab

  • Keegan Hoffman

    • Tennessee Technological University

  • Adam T Holley

    • Tennessee Technological University

  • Alexander K Komives

    • DePauw University

  • Chen-Yu Liu

    • Indiana University Bloomington

  • Mark F Makela

    • Los Alamos National Laboratory

  • Rifet Musedinovic

    • North Carolina State University

  • Christopher M O'Shaughnessy

    • Los Alamos National Laboratory

  • Robert W Pattie

    • East Tennessee State University

  • John C Ramsey

    • Oak Ridge National Laboratory

  • Daniel J Salvat

    • Indiana University
    • Indiana University Bloomington

  • Alexander Saunders

    • Oak Ridge National Lab

  • E I Sharapov

    • JINR

  • V Su

    • California Institute of Technology

  • Wade Uhrich

    • Los Alamos National Laboratory

  • John Vanderwerp

    • Indiana University

  • Peter L Walstrom

    • Los Alamos Natl Lab

  • Zhehui Wang

    • Los Alamos Natl Lab

  • Wanchun Wei

    • Caltech

  • Albert Young

    • North Carolina State University