Characterization of Segmented Semiconductor Detectors for Neutron Beta Decay

The neutron beta decay process can be used to extract V_ud which is an extremely sensitive probe of CKM unitarity and Beyond-the-Standard-Model physics. The Nab collaboration will study this by collecting the decay protons (and electrons) in an asymmetric time-of-flight spectrometer. In this talk I will give an overview of the University of Manitoba’s low energy steerable proton source and discuss the characterization of the silicon detectors used in the Nab experiment with protons and radioactive sources. Specifically, an investigation of detector performance as a function of various system parameters will be presented. These parameters include, but are not limited to detector bias voltage, proton energy, temperature, and electronic noise.