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Improved Neutron Lifetime Measurement with UCNτ.

Authors :
Gonzalez FM
Fries EM
Cude-Woods C
Bailey T
Blatnik M
Broussard LJ
Callahan NB
Choi JH
Clayton SM
Currie SA
Dawid M
Dees EB
Filippone BW
Fox W
Geltenbort P
George E
Hayen L
Hickerson KP
Hoffbauer MA
Hoffman K
Holley AT
Ito TM
Komives A
Liu CY
Makela M
Morris CL
Musedinovic R
O'Shaughnessy C
Pattie RW
Ramsey J
Salvat DJ
Saunders A
Sharapov EI
Slutsky S
Su V
Sun X
Swank C
Tang Z
Uhrich W
Vanderwerp J
Walstrom P
Wang Z
Wei W
Young AR
Source :
Physical review letters [Phys Rev Lett] 2021 Oct 15; Vol. 127 (16), pp. 162501.
Publication Year :
2021

Abstract

We report an improved measurement of the free neutron lifetime τ_{n} using the UCNτ apparatus at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center. We count a total of approximately 38×10^{6} surviving ultracold neutrons (UCNs) after storing in UCNτ's magnetogravitational trap over two data acquisition campaigns in 2017 and 2018. We extract τ_{n} from three blinded, independent analyses by both pairing long and short storage time runs to find a set of replicate τ_{n} measurements and by performing a global likelihood fit to all data while self-consistently incorporating the β-decay lifetime. Both techniques achieve consistent results and find a value τ_{n}=877.75±0.28_{stat}+0.22/-0.16_{syst}  s. With this sensitivity, neutron lifetime experiments now directly address the impact of recent refinements in our understanding of the standard model for neutron decay.

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
1079-7114
Volume :
127
Issue :
16
Database :
MEDLINE
Journal :
Physical review letters
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
34723594
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.162501