English

Improved limits on Fierz Interference using asymmetry measurements from the UCNA experiment

Nuclear Experiment 2020-03-25 v1

Abstract

The Ultracold Neutron Asymmetry (UCNA) experiment was designed to measure the β\beta-decay asymmetry parameter, A0A_0, for free neutron decay. In the experiment, polarized ultracold neutrons are transported into a decay trap, and their β\beta-decay electrons are detected with 4π\approx 4\pi acceptance into two detector packages which provide position and energy reconstruction. The experiment also has sensitivity to bnb_{n}, the Fierz interference term in the neutron β\beta-decay rate. In this work, we determine bnb_{n} from the energy dependence of A0A_0 using the data taken during the UCNA 2011-2013 run. In addition, we present the same type of analysis using the earlier 2010 AA dataset. Motivated by improved statistics and comparable systematic errors compared to the 2010 data-taking run, we present a new bnb_{n} measurement using the weighted average of our asymmetry dataset fits, to obtain bn=0.066±0.041stat±0.024systb_{n} = 0.066 \pm 0.041_{\text{stat}} \pm 0.024_{\text{syst}} which corresponds to a limit of 0.012<bn<0.144-0.012 < b_{n} < 0.144 at the 90% confidence level.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1911.05829,
  title  = {Improved limits on Fierz Interference using asymmetry measurements from the UCNA experiment},
  author = {Xuan Sun and E. Adamek and B. Allgeier and Y. Bagdasarova and D. B. Berguno and M. Blatnik and T. J. Bowles and L. J. Broussard and M. A. -P. Brown and R. Carr and S. Clayton and C. Cude-Woods and S. Currie and E. B. Dees and X. Ding and B. W. Filippone and A. García and P. Geltenbort and S. Hasan and K. P. Hickerson and J. Hoagland and R. Hong and A. T. Holley and T. M. Ito and A. Knecht and C. -Y. Liu and J. Liu and M. Makela and R. Mammei and J. W. Martin and D. Melconian and M. P. Mendenhall and S. D. Moore and C. L. Morris and S. Nepal and N. Nouri and R. W. Pattie and A. Pérez Galván and D. G. Phillips and R. Picker and M. L. Pitt and B. Plaster and D. J. Salvat and A. Saunders and E. I. Sharapov and S. Sjue and S. Slutsky and W. Sondheim and C. Swank and E. Tatar and R. B. Vogelaar and B. VornDick and Z. Wang and W. Wei and J. W. Wexler and T. Womack and C. Wrede and A. R. Young and B. A. Zeck},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1911.05829},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

6 pages, 3 figures. Submission to PRC