English

The WITCH experiment: Acquiring the first recoil ion spectrum

Nuclear Experiment 2008-07-23 v1

Abstract

The standard model of the electroweak interaction describes beta-decay in the well-known V-A form. Nevertheless, the most general Hamiltonian of a beta-decay includes also other possible interaction types, e.g. scalar (S) and tensor (T) contributions, which are not fully ruled out yet experimentally. The WITCH experiment aims to study a possible admixture of these exotic interaction types in nuclear beta-decay by a precise measurement of the shape of the recoil ion energy spectrum. The experimental set-up couples a double Penning trap system and a retardation spectrometer. The set-up is installed in ISOLDE/CERN and was recently shown to be fully operational. The current status of the experiment is presented together with the data acquired during the 2006 campaign, showing the first recoil ion energy spectrum obtained. The data taking procedure and corresponding data acquisition system are described in more detail. Several further technical improvements are briefly reviewed.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0807.3421,
  title  = {The WITCH experiment: Acquiring the first recoil ion spectrum},
  author = {V. Yu. Kozlov and M. Beck and S. Coeck and P. Delahaye and P. Friedag and M. Herbane and A. Herlert and I. S. Kraev and M. Tandecki and S. Van Gorp and F. Wauters and Ch. Weinheimer and F. Wenander and D. Zakoucky and N. Severijns},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0807.3421},
  year   = {2008}
}

Comments

11 pages, 6 figures, conference proceedings EMIS 2007 (http://emis2007.ganil.fr), published also in NIM B: doi:10.1016/j.nimb.2008.05.150

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