Abstract
The Nab experiment will measure the ratio of the weak axial-vector and vector coupling constants λ = gA/gV with precision δλ/λ ∼ 3 × 10− 4 and search for a Fierz term bF at a level ΔbF < 10− 3. The Nab detection system uses thick, large area, segmented silicon detectors to very precisely determine the decay proton’s time of flight and the decay electron’s energy in coincidence and reconstruct the correlation between the antineutrino and electron momenta. Excellent understanding of systematic effects affecting timing and energy reconstruction using this detection system are required. To explore these effects, a series of ex situ studies have been undertaken, including a search for a Fierz term at a less sensitive level of ΔbF < 10− 2 in the beta decay of 45Ca using the UCNA spectrometer.
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Acknowledgements
Research was sponsored by the Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program [project 8215] of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, managed by UT-Battelle, LLC, for the U. S. Department of Energy, and by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Nuclear Physics [contracts DE-AC05-00OR2272, DE-AC52-06NA25396, DE-FG02-03ER41258, DE-FG02-ER41042, DE-SC0008107, and DE-SC0014622], the National Science Foundation [contracts 1126683, 1506320, 1614839, 1615153], the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada [contract SAPPJ/32-2016], and the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO). We are grateful to the UCNA collaboration for use of their spectrometer.
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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Proceedings of the 7th Symposium on Symmetries in Subatomic Physics (SSP 2018), Aachen, Germany, 10-15 June 2018
Guest Edited by Hans Ströher, Jörg Pretz, Livia Ludhova and Achim Stahl
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Broussard, L.J., Baeßler, S., Bailey, T.L. et al. Using Nab to determine correlations in unpolarized neutron decay. Hyperfine Interact 240, 1 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10751-018-1538-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10751-018-1538-7