EPJ Web of Conferences (Jan 2019)

aCORN: Measuring the electron-antineutrino correlation in neutron beta decay

  • Wietfeldt F.E.,
  • Byron W.A.,
  • Collett B.,
  • Darius G.,
  • DeAngelis C.R.,
  • Dewey M.S.,
  • Hassan M.T.,
  • Jones G.,
  • Komives A.,
  • Mendenhall M.P.,
  • Nico J.S.,
  • Stephenson E.J.

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/201921904008
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 219
p. 04008

Abstract

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The aCORN experiment uses a novel asymmetry method to measure the electron-antineutrino correlation (a-coefficient) in free neutron decay that does not require precision proton spectroscopy. aCORN completed two physics runs at the NIST Center for Neutron Research. The first run on the NG-6 beam line obtained the result a = 0.1090 +/- 0.0030 (stat) +/- 0.0028 (sys), the most precise to date. The second run on the new NG-C high flux beam line promises an improvement in precision to ¡ 2%. In addition we show that an improved measurement of the neutrino asymmetry (B-coefficient) can be made using the aCORN apparatus on a highly polarized neutron beam.