Speaker
Description
Ultracold neutrons (UCN) can help solve some of the universe's fundamental puzzles: very high precision experiments are possible due to observation times lasting up to hundreds of seconds.
However, experiments, such as searches for the neutron electric dipole moment, measurements of the neutron lifetime, and tests of neutron-gravity-interaction tests have been statistics limited.
Our TRIUMF UltraCold Advanced Neutron collaboration has been striving to improve this situation by employing a unique combination of technologies for our new UCN source: a spallation neutron target served by the proton beam from the TRIUMF cyclotron provides a large flux of fast neutrons that are moderated by heavy water at room temperature and liquid deuterium at around 25 K. Cold neutrons from deuterium are converted to the ultracold regime by interacting with collective excitations in a volume of superfluid, isotopically pure helium-4 at around 1 K.
Due to the long storage lifetime of UCN in superfluid helium, the TUCAN source can produce and provide UCN continuously to experiments at full proton current.
In the last two years, we successfully completed the source, produced ultracold neutrons and extracted them to the UCN experimental area. The presentation will provide an overview of the source and summarize its very successful first UCN runs.