Neutron lifetime measurement on setups with gravitational trap

Abstract

Currently, the best accuracy of neutron lifetime measurements has been attained in the experiment with a gravitational trap for ultracold neutrons (UCNs), performed at the Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute (PNPI); the measured lifetime was 878.5 ± 0.8 s. A new setup with a big gravitational trap has been designed to continue the methods and approaches used in the previous experiment. It is planned to reduce the measurement error to 0.2 s, i.e., improve the existing accuracy by a factor of 4. The spectrometer was designed at PNPI and installed on the PF2/MAM beam at the Institute Laue–Langevin. Test experiments have been performed.