Ca beta spectrum measurement at Los Alamos National Laboratory

Although the Standard Model describes fundamental particle interactions to high precision, neutrino flavor oscillations, the observed baryon asymmetry, and complete absence of gravity from the model make it clear that there exists important physics which the model does not describe: so called beyond the standard model (BSM). The Fierz interference term for beta decay is one such observable sensitive to exotic scalar/tensor currents motivated by several BSM theories. A nonzero measurement of the Fierz term essentially manifests in the form of a distortion of the beta decay electron energy spectrum. ⁴⁵Ca is a particularly appealing nucleus to attempt a measurement of the interference term, as it is an allowed, pure ground state to ground state, beta emitter. A measurement was performed at Los Alamos National Lab in 2017. A brief overview of the experiment along with some preliminary waveform data analyses will be presented.