Increased Sensitivity to Possible Muonium to Antimuonium Conversion

A new experimental search for muonium-antimuonium conversion was conducted at the Paul Scherrer Institute, Villigen, Switzerland. The preliminary analysis yielded one event fulfilling all required criteria at an expected background of 1.7(2) events due to accidental coincidences. An upper limit for the conversion probability in 0.1 T magnetic field is extracted as $8 \cdot 10^{-11}$ (90% CL).Comment: 2 figure

Approaching the Gamow Window with Stored Ions : Direct Measurement of Xe 124 (p,γ) in the ESR Storage Ring

© 2019 American Physical Society. All rights reserved.We report the first measurement of low-energy proton-capture cross sections of Xe124 in a heavy-ion storage ring. Xe12454+ ions of five different beam energies between 5.5 and 8 AMeV were stored to collide with a windowless hydrogen target. The Cs125 reaction products were directly detected. The interaction energies are located on the high energy tail of the Gamow window for hot, explosive scenarios such as supernovae and x-ray binaries. The results serve as an important test of predicted astrophysical reaction rates in this mass range. Good agreement in the prediction of the astrophysically important proton width at low energy is found, with only a 30% difference between measurement and theory. Larger deviations are found above the neutron emission threshold, where also neutron and γ widths significantly impact the cross sections. The newly established experimental method is a very powerful tool to investigate nuclear reactions on rare ion beams at low center-of-mass energies.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio