Bulletin of the American Physical Society
2016 Fall Meeting of the APS Division of Nuclear Physics
Volume 61, Number 13
Thursday–Sunday, October 13–16, 2016; Vancouver, BC, Canada
Session NH: Mini-symposium on Instrumentation for Physics Beyond the Standard Model IBMini-Symposium
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Chair: Kent Leung, NCSU Room: Pavilion Ballroom C |
Sunday, October 16, 2016 8:30AM - 8:42AM |
NH.00001: Monte Carlo Modeling the UCN$\tau$ Magneto-Gravitational Trap A.T. Holley for the UCNtau Collaboration The current uncertainty in our knowledge of the free neutron lifetime is dominated by the nearly $4\sigma$ discrepancy between complementary "beam" and "bottle" measurement techniques. An incomplete assessment of systematic effects is the most likely explanation for this difference and must be addressed in order to realize the potential of both approaches. The UCN$\tau$ collaboration has constructed a large-volume magneto-gravitational trap that eliminates the material interactions which complicated the interpretation of previous bottle experiments. This is accomplished using permanent NdFeB magnets in a bowl-shaped Halbach array to confine polarized UCN from the sides and below and the earth's gravitational field to trap them from above. New \textit{in situ} detectors that count surviving UCN provide a means of empirically assessing residual systematic effects. The interpretation of that data, and its implication for experimental configurations with enhanced precision, can be bolstered by Monte Carlo models of the current experiment which provide the capability for stable tracking of trapped UCN and detailed modeling of their polarization. Work to develop such models and their comparison with data acquired during our first extensive set of systematics studies will be discussed. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, October 16, 2016 8:42AM - 8:54AM |
NH.00002: A real-time in-situ detector for the UCN$\tau $ experiment C. Cude-Woods Currently, the most precise cold-neutron beam and ultra-could neutron bottle measurements of the neutron life time disagree by more than$4\sigma $. The leading systematic uncertainties in previous bottle measurements are due to wall losses, quasi-bound neutron leakage, as well as phase-space and spectrum evolution during storage.~ The magneto-gravitational trap used for UCN$\tau $ minimizes losses by eliminating material interactions during storage. In order to address the remaining leading systematics we have developed a multilayer surface detector technology for UCN using $^{\mathrm{10}}$B evaporated onto ZnS:Ag and have applied this technology in a new double sided, large area, high efficiency detector for UCN$\tau $ (the "active dagger"), that allows spectrum and phase-space evolution and quasi-bound UCN leakage to be quantified and minimized in our lifetime measurement. We installed and used the active dagger to take data during the 2015-2016 run at Los Alamos Neutron Science Center.~ In addition to vastly improving the signal to noise ratio over previous counting techniques and eliminating several possible systematics, the active dagger allows us to record neutron capture in situ and in real time and directly study phase space evolution in the trap for the first time. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, October 16, 2016 8:54AM - 9:06AM |
NH.00003: Systematic Studies using the UCN$\tau$ Magneto-Gravitational Trap Susan Seestrom The UCN$\tau$ Experiment measures the neutron lifetime using Ultracold Neutrons (UCN) stored in a magneto-gravitational trap. The trap employs various techniques to remove neutrons whose energies are too high to be trapped. It has recently been instrumented with a novel \textit{in situ} detector that can be lowered into the trap to measure the neutron population as a function of height within the trap. This has allowed us to perform a series of systematic studies aimed at understanding and quantifying potential systematic effects associated with quasi-bound neutrons and phase space evolution. We have obtained multiple sets of data each having a statistical uncertainty of about 3 sec. We will discuss the results of our studies of cleaning and phase space evolution as well as results from studies of backgrounds and normalization of the initial neutron loading. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, October 16, 2016 9:06AM - 9:18AM |
NH.00004: Calibration and optimization of the Project 8 Phase II apparatus toward a tritium beta decay spectrum measurement Mathieu Guigue The Project 8 collaboration aims to measure the absolute neutrino mass scale using a Cyclotron Radiation Emission Spectroscopy technique on the beta decays of tritium. With the recent developments achieved in the Phase II of the experiment such as a molecular tritium gas handling system and a larger effective decay volume, we will be able to measure the differential-energy spectrum of tritium beta decays for the very first time and be sensitive to extract the tritium endpoint value on an eV or sub-eV scale. The measured frequency of monoenergetic electrons emitted by gaseous metastable Krypton 83 atoms can be used as an energy calibration and to optimize the instrument configuration for the tritium measurement. Here we present the status of this calibration procedure and the tritium data-taking plan. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, October 16, 2016 9:18AM - 9:30AM |
NH.00005: Upgrades for the Project 8 Phase II Apparatus Walter Pettus Project 8 employs the Cyclotron Radiation Emission Spectroscopy (CRES) technique towards the ultimate goal of a high precision tritium endpoint measurement. Following the successful first demonstration of CRES, the collaboration has pursued a number of improvements to the apparatus and has recently commissioned its second phase. A new cell design and gas handling system will allow the first measurement of molecular tritium with this setup. New data acquisition systems have been implemented providing greater trigger flexibility and scalability towards future multi-antenna phases. We will highlight the hardware and instrumentation advances defining this new experimental phase of Project 8. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, October 16, 2016 9:30AM - 9:42AM |
NH.00006: Project 8, Phase III Design: Placing an eV-Scale Limit on the Neutrino Mass using Cyclotron Radiation Emission Spectroscopy Noah Oblath We report on the design concept for Phase~III of the Project~8 experiment. In the third phase of Project~8 we aim to place a limit on the neutrino mass that is similar to the current limits set by tritium beta-decay experiments, $m_{\nu} < 2\, \mathrm{eV}$. From the first two phases of Project~8 we move to a novel design consisting of a ${\sim}100\, \mathrm{cm}^3$ cylindrical volume of tritium gas instrumented with two 30-element rings of inward-facing antennas. Beam-forming techniques similar to those used in radioastronomy will be employed to search for and track electron signals in the fiducial volume. This talk will present the quantitative design concept for the phased-array receiver, and illustrate how we are progressing towards the Phase~IV experiment, which will have sensitivity to the neutrino mass scale allowed by the inverted mass hierarchy. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, October 16, 2016 9:42AM - 9:54AM |
NH.00007: Detectors for the COHERENT neutrino experiment Rex Tayloe The COHERENT collaboration is deploying a suite of low-threshold detectors at the SNS in a low-background corridor to detect coherent elastic neutrino nucleus scattering (CEvNS), to measure the $N^2$-dependence of the cross section, and to search for physics beyond the standard model. These detectors must be low-threshold and low-background in order to observe the low-energy nuclear recoil in the CEvNS process with $\approx$ 10~MeV SNS neutrinos. A 14kg CsI detector has run for the last year. Liquid Ar, high-purity Ge, and NaI detectors will be installed in near future. Demonstrated and predicted performance of these detectors for observation of CEvNS will be presented. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, October 16, 2016 9:54AM - 10:06AM |
NH.00008: A radial Time Projection Chamber for the ALPHA-g antimatter gravity measurement at CERN Lars Martin, Pierre-André Amaudruz, Daryl Bishop, Andrea Capra, Makoto Fujiwara, Robert Henderson, Leonid Kurchaninov, Scott Menary, Konstantin Olchanski Antimatter is believed to be affected by gravity in exactly the same way as ordinary matter for a variety of good reasons, however this has never been measured directly. The ALPHA-g project is a new antihydrogen trap based on the previous ALPHA design (Antihydrogen Laser Physics Apparatus, the first experiment to trap antihydrogen in 2010). As in previous ALPHA experiments the trapped antihydrogen is detected via its charged annihilation products after switching off the trap. In order to be sensitive to small gravitational effects the setup extends more than 2 m in the vertical direction, requiring the particle detection system to cover a large volume with good tracking accuracy. The design chosen to replace the previous experiments' Silicon detectors is a radial field time-projection-chamber (rTPC) filled with an Argon/CO$_2$ mixture. Results of extensive Garfield simulations and prototype tests are presented and evaluated in terms of vertex resolution and its consequences for the gravity measurement. Additionally we give a progress report on the construction of the final detector, which is scheduled to be on-line in late 2017 for a first stage \emph{up/down} measurement. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, October 16, 2016 10:06AM - 10:18AM |
NH.00009: Magnetic trap design for precision antihydrogen gravity measurement in ALPHA-g at CERN Chukman So, P. Amadruz, W. Bertsche, A. Capra, N. Evetts, J. Fajans, W. Frazer, M.C. Fujiwara, D. Gill, J. Hangst, W. Hardy, M. Hayden, R. Henderson, P. Lu, L. Kurchaninov, N. Madsen, J. McKenna, S. Menary, T. Momose, K. Olchanski, A. Olin, F. Robicheaux, J. Thompson, R. Thompson, J. Wurtele ALPHA first measured the gravitational mass of antihydrogen atoms in a magnetic minimum trap in 2013, limiting anomalous gravity-like forces coupled to the antiatoms to \textless 75 times the ordinary gravity. A new apparatus is being designed to tighten the limit to much better than order unity. It entails a \textasciitilde 2 meter long magnetic trap with a vertical long axis to enhance gravity signal. The trap magnets are designed to ensure magnetic up-down asymmetry \textgreater 1e-5 T in the central region. This field control is achieved by carefully considering the effect of winding errors, the inter-connections between current loops, the location of current leads, shape of slices, as well as the detailed characteristics of superconducting wires. [Preview Abstract] |
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