Bulletin of the American Physical Society
74th Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Section
Volume 52, Number 13
Thursday–Saturday, November 8–10, 2007; Nashville, Tennessee
Session BA: Fundamental Neutron Physics at the SNS |
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Chair: Chris Crawford, University of Kentucky Room: Scarritt-Bennett Center Laskey Great Hall |
Thursday, November 8, 2007 8:30AM - 9:00AM |
BA.00001: The Fundamental Neutron Physics Beamline at the Spallation Neutron Source Invited Speaker: The Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory began operation in April 2006 and is in the process of ramping up to full operational capacity. The major focus of the SNS is condensed matter research, however, the SNS has dedicated one of its cold neutron beamlines for nuclear and particle physics research. This Fundamental Neutron Physics Beamline (FNPB) is scheduled to commence operations in 2008. The anticipated research program at the FNPB includes studies of neutron beta decay and the hadronic weak interaction as well as a search for a neutron electric dipole moment. The talk will give an overview of the FNPB project, a construction status update, and a description of the initial, anticipated, suite of measurements. [Preview Abstract] |
Thursday, November 8, 2007 9:00AM - 9:30AM |
BA.00002: Neutron decay correlation measurements Invited Speaker: The study of neutron beta decay serves to determine the coupling constants of beta decay and allows several low energy precision tests of the Standard Model of Elementary Particle Physics. For this purpose, measurements of neutron lifetime and of correlations between the particles involved have to be combined. In my talk I will present a survey on experiments to measure neutron decay correlations. I want to discuss the lessons to be learnt from previous experiments in Europe and the US to the experimental program at the SNS. [Preview Abstract] |
Thursday, November 8, 2007 9:30AM - 10:00AM |
BA.00003: A New Search for the Neutron Electric Dipole Moment at the Spallation Neutron Source Invited Speaker: A non-zero neutron electric dipole moment would provide the first evidence for the existence of Time-Reversal-Symmetry violation, equivalent to Charge-Conjugation-Parity (CP-) violation via the CPT theorem, in a stable system of light quarks. Such a discovery would be of fundamental importance, because additional sources of CP-violation are needed to explain the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the universe. Efforts spanning the past 50 years have increased the sensitivity to this miniscule quantity by eight orders of magnitude, culminating in the current upper limit of $3 \times 10^{-26}$ $e$-cm. In this talk I will describe a new search by the nEDM Collaboration to be staged at the Spallation Neutron Source. This new experiment holds the potential for a two-orders-of-magnitude improvement in sensitivity, and is based on a magnetic resonance approach of comparing the neutron's spin precession frequency in parallel and anti-parallel electric and magnetic fields. Progress, plans, and challenges facing the experiment will be discussed. [Preview Abstract] |
Thursday, November 8, 2007 10:00AM - 10:30AM |
BA.00004: Measuring the Neutron Lifetime Using Magnetically Trapped Ultracold Neutrons Invited Speaker: The neutron lifetime plays an important role in understanding both the Standard Model and Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. The two most precise measurements to date use ultracold neutrons (UCN) bottled in a material-walled trap. Each group reports measurements with uncertainties of approximately 1~s, but differ in their central value by almost 7 s. We are in the process of measuring the lifetime using a newly-developed technique employing magnetic trapping that has a completely different set of systematic effects than all previous measurements. We have successfully demonstrated the feasibility of the technique, with current work aimed at upgrading the apparatus to significantly increase the number of trapped neutrons. We expect to reduce the statistical uncertainties in our measurement technique to 1-2 s when running at NIST, with greater improvements expected at the SNS. [Preview Abstract] |
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