Colloquium: The neutron lifetime

The Puzzle of Neutron Lifetime

In this paper we review the role of the neutron lifetime and discuss the present status of measurements. In view of the large discrepancy observed by the two most precise individual measurements so far we describe the different techniques and point out principle strengths and weaknesses. In particular we discuss the estimation of systematic uncertainties and its correlation to the statistical o...

Determination of the Free Neutron Lifetime

J. David Bowman, L. J. Broussard, S. M. Clayton, M. S. Dewey, N. Fomin, K. B. Grammer, G. L. Greene, 1, † P. R. Huffman, A. T. Holley, G. L. Jones, C.-Y. Liu, M. Makela, M. P. Mendenhall, C. L. Morris, J. Mulholland, K. M. Nollett, 10 R. W. Pattie, Jr., S. Penttilä, M. Ramsey-Musolf, D. J. Salvat, 2 A. Saunders, S. J. Seestrom, W. M. Snow, A. Steyerl, F. E. Wietfeldt, A. R. Young, and A. T. Yue...

Neutron radioactivity—Lifetime measurements of neutron-unbound states

A new technique to measure the lifetime � of a neutron-radioactive nucleus that decays in-flight via neutron emission is presented and demonstrated utilizing MonteCarlo simulations. The method is based on the production of the neutron-unbound nucleus in a target, which at the same time slows down the produced nucleus and the residual nucleus after (multi-) neutron emission. The spectrum of the ...

Neutron lifetime measured with stored ultracold neutrons.

Lifetime measurements for neutron-rich nuclei around

Nowadays it has became clear that the magic numbers are not immutable and they can change as a function of the isospin, due to the influence of the residual interaction between valence orbitals [1]. Such a structural change in neutron-rich nuclei is verified in the appearance of the N = 32 subshell closure in nuclei located just above the doublymagic Ca and this can be inferred by different exp...