Speaker
Description
Koch and Hummel[1] suggest a new solution to the neutron lifetime enigma[2]. The neutron lifetime enigma arises from the 4.4 standard deviation difference between the lifetime measured for bottled neutrons[3] and measurements of lifetime from a beam of cold neutrons[4]. Koch and Hummel point out the beam experiments measure the decay rate of neutrons very close in time to their source whereas the bottle measurement use neutrons ~1000 s after their production. They postulate the existence of an excited state of the neutron, n*, that has a longer $\beta$-decay lifetime than the ground state, n, and that a transition could occur between these two states by $\gamma$-ray emission with a decay time shorter than the holding time used for bottle lifetime measurements. Here, we will present an analysis of the UCN$_\tau$ data aimed a searching for an explanation of this difference using the model proposed by Koch and Hummel.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Dr. Ben Koch for his comments on the paper. This work is supported by the LANL LDRD program; the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Nuclear Physics under Awards No. DE-FG02-ER41042, No. DE-AC52-06NA25396, No. DE-AC05-00OR2272, and No. 89233218CNA000001 under proposal LANLEDM; NSF Grants No.
