Published December 2022 | Version public
Journal Article

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

  • 1. ROR icon North Carolina State University
  • 2. ROR icon Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory
  • 3. ROR icon Indiana University Bloomington
  • 4. ROR icon Oak Ridge National Laboratory
  • 5. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 6. ROR icon Argonne National Laboratory
  • 7. ROR icon Los Alamos National Laboratory
  • 8. ROR icon Institut Laue-Langevin
  • 9. ROR icon Tennessee Technological University
  • 10. ROR icon DePauw University
  • 11. ROR icon East Tennessee State University
  • 12. ROR icon Joint Institute for Nuclear Research

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 τₙ = 876.3(2.4)_(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.

Additional Information

This work was 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 LANLEDM; NSF Grants No. 1614545, No. 1914133, No. 1506459, No. 1553861, No. 1812340, No. 1714461, No. 2110898, and No. 1913789; and a NIST precision measurements Grant.

Additional details

Identifiers

Eprint ID
118934
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20230125-514504700.12

Related works

Funding

Department of Energy (DOE)
DE-FG02-ER41042
Department of Energy (DOE)
DE-AC52-06NA25396
Department of Energy (DOE)
DE-AC05-00OR2272
Department of Energy (DOE)
89233218CNA000001
NSF
PHY-1614545
NSF
PHY-1914133
NSF
PHY-1506459
NSF
PHY-1553861
NSF
PHY-1812340
NSF
PHY-1714461
NSF
PHY-2110898
NSF
PHY-1913789
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

Dates

Created
2023-02-17
Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated
2023-02-21
Created from EPrint's last_modified field

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