First Precision Measurement of the Parity Violating Asymmetry in Cold Neutron Capture on He 3

M. T. Gericke, S. Baeßler, L. Barrón-Palos, N. Birge, J. D. Bowman, J. Calarco, V. Cianciolo, C. E. Coppola, C. B. Crawford, N. Fomin, I. Garishvili, G. L. Greene, G. M. Hale, J. Hamblen, C. Hayes, E. Iverson, M. L. Kabir, M. McCrea, E. Plemons, A. Ramírez-MoralesP. E. Mueller, I. Novikov, S. Penttila, E. M. Scott, J. Watts, C. Wickersham

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

11 Scopus citations

Abstract

We report the first precision measurement of the parity-violating asymmetry in the direction of proton momentum with respect to the neutron spin, in the reaction He3(n,p)3H, using the capture of polarized cold neutrons in an unpolarized active He3 target. The asymmetry is a result of the weak interaction between nucleons, which remains one of the least well-understood aspects of electroweak theory. The measurement provides an important benchmark for modern effective field theory and potential model calculations. Measurements like this are necessary to determine the spin-isospin structure of the hadronic weak interaction. Our asymmetry result is APV=[1.55±0.97(stat)±0.24(sys)]×10-8, which has the smallest uncertainty of any hadronic parity-violating asymmetry measurement so far.

Original languageEnglish
Article number131803
JournalPhysical Review Letters
Volume125
Issue number13
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 2020

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 American Physical Society.

Funding

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Physics through Grants No. DE-FG02-03ER41258, No. DE-AC05-00OR22725, No. DE-SC0008107 and No. DE-SC0014622, the U.S. National Science Foundation Grant No. PHY-0855584, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI), the Mexico National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT) Grant No. 80444, and the UNAM research Grants (PAPIIT) No. IN111913 and No. IN109120. This research used resources of the Spallation Neutron Source of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a DOE Office of Science User Facility. We also thank Michele Viviani (INFN Pisa) for very fruitful theory discussions and Jack Thomison (ORNL) for his engineering support.

FundersFunder number
Jack Thomison
U.S. Department of Energy Office of Nuclear PhysicsDE-AC05-00OR22725, DE-FG02-03ER41258, DE-SC0008107, DE-SC0014622
National Science FoundationPHY-0855584
Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences0855584
Office of Science
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
Canada Foundation for Innovation
Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología80444
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de MéxicoIN109120, IN111913

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