45 research outputs found
The point spread function of electrons in a magnetic field, and the decay of the free neutron
Experiments in nuclear and particle physics often use magnetic fields to
guide charged reaction products to a detector. Due to their gyration in the
guide field, the particles hit the detector within an area that can be
considerably larger than the diameter of the source where the particles are
produced. This blurring of the image of the particle source on the detector
surface is described by a suitable point spread function (PSF), which is
defined as the image of a point source. We derive simple analytical expressions
for such magnetic PSFs, valid for any angular distribution of the emitted
particles that can be developed in Legendre polynomials. We investigate this
rather general problem in the context of neutron beta decay spectrometers and
study the effect of limited detector size on measured neutron decay correlation
parameters. To our surprise, insufficient detector size does not affect much
the accuracy of such measurements, even for rather large radii of gyration.
This finding can considerably simplify the layout of the respective
spectrometers.Comment: 24 pages, 12 figure
Neutron Beam Effects on Spin Exchange Polarized He-3
We have observed depolarization effects when high intensity cold neutron
beams are incident on alkali-metal-spin-exchange polarized He-3 cells used as
neutron spin filters. This was first observed as a reduction of the maximum
attainable He-3 polarization and was attributed to a decrease of alkali-metal
polarization, which led us to directly measure alkali-metal polarization and
spin relaxation over a range of neutron fluxes at LANSCE and ILL. The data
reveal a new alkali-metal spin-relaxation mechanism that approximately scales
as the square root of the neutron capture-flux density incident on the cell.
This is consistent with an effect proportional to the recombination-limited ion
concentration, but is much larger than expected from earlier work.Comment: submitted to Physical Review Letter
New measurement of the scattering cross section of slow neutrons on liquid parahydrogen from neutron transmission
Liquid hydrogen is a dense Bose fluid whose equilibrium properties are both
calculable from first principles using various theoretical approaches and of
interest for the understanding of a wide range of questions in many body
physics. Unfortunately, the pair correlation function inferred from
neutron scattering measurements of the differential cross section from different measurements reported in the literature are
inconsistent. We have measured the energy dependence of the total cross section
and the scattering cross section for slow neutrons with energies between
0.43~meV and 16.1~meV on liquid hydrogen at 15.6~K (which is dominated by the
parahydrogen component) using neutron transmission measurements on the hydrogen
target of the NPDGamma collaboration at the Spallation Neutron Source at Oak
Ridge National Laboratory. The relationship between the neutron transmission
measurement we perform and the total cross section is unambiguous, and the
energy range accesses length scales where the pair correlation function is
rapidly varying. At 1~meV our measurement is a factor of 3 below the data from
previous work. We present evidence that these previous measurements of the
hydrogen cross section, which assumed that the equilibrium value for the ratio
of orthohydrogen and parahydrogen has been reached in the target liquid, were
in fact contaminated with an extra non-equilibrium component of orthohydrogen.
Liquid parahydrogen is also a widely-used neutron moderator medium, and an
accurate knowledge of its slow neutron cross section is essential for the
design and optimization of intense slow neutron sources. We describe our
measurements and compare them with previous work.Comment: Edited for submission to Physical Review
Type Ia supernovae and the ^{12}C+^{12}C reaction rate
The experimental determination of the cross-section of the ^{12}C+^{12}C
reaction has never been made at astrophysically relevant energies (E<2 MeV).
The profusion of resonances throughout the measured energy range has led to
speculation that there is an unknown resonance at E\sim1.5 MeV possibly as
strong as the one measured for the resonance at 2.14 MeV. We study the
implications that such a resonance would have for the physics of SNIa, paying
special attention to the phases that go from the crossing of the ignition curve
to the dynamical event. We use one-dimensional hydrostatic and hydrodynamic
codes to follow the evolution of accreting white dwarfs until they grow close
to the Chandrasekhar mass and explode as SNIa. In our simulations, we account
for a low-energy resonance by exploring the parameter space allowed by
experimental data. A change in the ^{12}C+^{12}C rate similar to the one
explored here would have profound consequences for the physical conditions in
the SNIa explosion, namely the central density, neutronization, thermal
profile, mass of the convective core, location of the runaway hot spot, or time
elapsed since crossing the ignition curve. For instance, with the largest
resonance strength we use, the time elapsed since crossing the ignition curve
to the supernova event is shorter by a factor ten than for models using the
standard rate of ^{12}C+^{12}C, and the runaway temperature is reduced from
\sim8.14\times10^{8} K to \sim4.26\times10^{8} K. On the other hand, a
resonance at 1.5 MeV, with a strength ten thousand times smaller than the one
measured at 2.14 MeV, but with an {\alpha}/p yield ratio substantially
different from 1 would have a sizeable impact on the degree of neutronization
of matter during carbon simmering. We conclude that a robust understanding of
the links between SNIa properties and their progenitors will not be attained
until the ^{12}C+^{12}C reaction rate is measured at energies \sim1.5 MeV.Comment: 15 pages, 6 tables, 10 figures, accepted for Astronomy and
Astrophysic
Reduction of deuterium content in carbon targets for 12C+12C reaction studies of astrophysical interest
The 12C(12C,p)23Na and 12C(12C,)20Ne fusion reactions are among the most important in stellar evolution since they determine the destiny of massive () stars. However, experimental low-energy investigations of such reactions are significantly hampered by ubiquitous natural hydrogen and deuterium contaminants in the carbon targets. The associated beam-induced background completely masks the reaction products of interest thus preventing cross-section measurements at the relevant energies of astrophysical interest, MeV. In this work, we report about an investigation aimed at assessing possible deuterium reductions on both natural graphite and Highly Ordered Pyrolytic Graphite targets as a function of target temperature. Our results indicate that reductions up to about 80% can be attained on both targets in the temperature range investigated, C. A further reduction by a factor of 2.5 in absolute deuterium content is observed when the scattering chamber is surrounded by a dry nitrogen atmosphere so as to minimise light-particles uptake within the chamber rest gas (and thus on target) through air leaks. The results from this study will inform the choice of optimal experimental conditions and procedures for improved measurements of the 12C + 12C reactions cross-sections at the low energies of astrophysical interest
Neutron Beta Decay Studies with Nab
Precision measurements in neutron beta decay serve to determine the coupling
constants of beta decay and allow for several stringent tests of the standard
model. This paper discusses the design and the expected performance of the Nab
spectrometer.Comment: Submitted to Proceedings of the Conference CIPANP12, St.Petersburg,
Florida, May 201
High-Efficiency Resonant RF Spin Rotator with Broad Phase Space Acceptance for Pulsed Polarized Cold Neutron Beams
We have developed a radio-frequency resonant spin rotator to reverse the
neutron polarization in a 9.5 cm x 9.5 cm pulsed cold neutron beam with high
efficiency over a broad cold neutron energy range. The effect of the spin
reversal by the rotator on the neutron beam phase space is compared
qualitatively to RF neutron spin flippers based on adiabatic fast passage. The
spin rotator does not change the kinetic energy of the neutrons and leaves the
neutron beam phase space unchanged to high precision. We discuss the design of
the spin rotator and describe two types of transmission-based neutron spin-flip
efficiency measurements where the neutron beam was both polarized and analyzed
by optically-polarized 3He neutron spin filters. The efficiency of the spin
rotator was measured to be 98.0+/-0.8% on resonance for neutron energies from
3.3 to 18.4 meV over the full phase space of the beam. As an example of the
application of this device to an experiment we describe the integration of the
RF spin rotator into an apparatus to search for the small parity-violating
asymmetry A_gamma in polarized cold neutron capture on para-hydrogen by the
NPDGamma collaboration at LANSCE
The effect of 12C + 12C rate uncertainties on the evolution and nucleosynthesis of massive stars
[Shortened] The 12C + 12C fusion reaction has been the subject of
considerable experimental efforts to constrain uncertainties at temperatures
relevant for stellar nucleosynthesis. In order to investigate the effect of an
enhanced carbon burning rate on massive star structure and nucleosynthesis, new
stellar evolution models and their yields are presented exploring the impact of
three different 12C + 12C reaction rates. Non-rotating stellar models were
generated using the Geneva Stellar Evolution Code and were later post-processed
with the NuGrid Multi-zone Post-Processing Network tool. The enhanced rate
causes core carbon burning to be ignited more promptly and at lower
temperature. This reduces the neutrino losses, which increases the core carbon
burning lifetime. An increased carbon burning rate also increases the upper
initial mass limit for which a star exhibits a convective carbon core. Carbon
shell burning is also affected, with fewer convective-shell episodes and
convection zones that tend to be larger in mass. Consequently, the chance of an
overlap between the ashes of carbon core burning and the following carbon shell
convection zones is increased, which can cause a portion of the ashes of carbon
core burning to be included in the carbon shell. Therefore, during the
supernova explosion, the ejecta will be enriched by s-process nuclides
synthesized from the carbon core s process. The yields were used to estimate
the weak s-process component in order to compare with the solar system
abundance distribution. The enhanced rate models were found to produce a
significant proportion of Kr, Sr, Y, Zr, Mo, Ru, Pd and Cd in the weak
component, which is primarily the signature of the carbon-core s process.
Consequently, it is shown that the production of isotopes in the Kr-Sr region
can be used to constrain the 12C + 12C rate using the current branching ratio
for a- and p-exit channels.Comment: The paper contains 17 figures and 7 tables. Table 7 will be published
in full online onl
First Observation of -odd Asymmetry in Polarized Neutron Capture on Hydrogen
We report the first observation of the parity-violating 2.2 MeV gamma-ray
asymmetry in neutron-proton capture using polarized cold
neutrons incident on a liquid parahydrogen target at the Spallation Neutron
Source at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. isolates the , \mbox{} component of the weak
nucleon-nucleon interaction, which is dominated by pion exchange and can be
directly related to a single coupling constant in either the DDH meson exchange
model or pionless EFT. We measured , which implies a DDH weak coupling of
and a pionless
EFT constant of MeV. We describe the experiment, data
analysis, systematic uncertainties, and the implications of the result.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure