We present the status of the development of a dedicated high density ultra-cold neutron (UCN) source dedicated to the gravitational spectrometer GRANIT. The source employs superthermal conversion of cold neutrons to UCN in superfluid helium. Tests have shown that UCN produced inside the liquid can be extracted into vacuum. Furthermore a dedicated neutron selection channel was tested to maintain high initial density and extract only neutrons with a vertical velocity component 20 cm/s for the spectrometer. This new source would have a phase-space density of 0.18 cm-3(m/s)-3 for the spectrometer.
The gravitational spectrometer GRANIT will be set up at the Institut Laue Langevin. It will profit from the high ultracold neutron density produced by a dedicated source. A monochromator made of crystals from graphite intercalated with potassium will provide a neutron beam with 0.89 nm incident on the source. The source employs superthermal conversion of cold neutrons in superfluid helium, in a vessel made from BeO ceramics with Be windows. A special extraction technique has been tested which feeds the spectrometer only with neutrons with a vertical velocity component v < 20 cm/s, thus keeping the density in the source high. This new source is expected to provide a density of up to 800 1/cm3 for the spectrometer.
Ultra-cold neutrons (UCN), neutrons with energies low enough to be confined by the Fermi potential in material bottles, are playing an increasing role in measurements of fundamental properties of the neutron. The ability to manipulate UCN with material guides and bottles, magnetic fields, and gravity can lead to experiments with lower systematic errors than have been obtained in experiments with cold neutron beams. The UCN densities provided by existing reactor sources limit these experiments. The promise of much higher densities from solid deuterium sources has led to proposed facilities coupled to both reactor and spallation neutron sources. In this paper we report on the performance of a prototype spallation neutron-driven solid deuterium source. This source produced bottled UCN densities of 145 +/-7 UCN/cm3, about three times greater than the largest bottled UCN densities previously reported. These results indicate that a production UCN source with substantially higher densities should be possible.
The dynamical structure factor of solid $^{15}$N$_{2}$ in the $alpha$ phase ($T<35$K) is measured at the IN4 time-of-flight spectrometer at the Institut Laue Langevin, and the potential performance of this substance as a UCN converter is assessed. The cross-section to down-scatter neutrons to ultra-cold neutron energies is determined as a function of incident energy, as well as the up-scattering mean free path. The UCN production cross-section is found to be approximately 20% of that of deuterium. However, UCN with energy 181 neV have an up-scattering mean free path of 46 cm at $T=5.9$ K, which is $sim20$ times larger than deuterium. Therefore, a large volume $alpha-^{15}$N$_{2}$ source may produce an improved UCN density if sufficient isotopic purity can be achieved.
A pixel detector with high spatial resolution and temporal information for ultra-cold neutrons is developed based on a commercial CCD on which a neutron converter is attached. 10B and 6Li are tested for the neutron converter and 10B is found to be more suitable based on efficiency and spatial resolution. The pixel detector has an efficiency of 44.1 +- 1.1% and a spatial resolution of 2.9 +- 0.1 um (1 sigma).
We describe an electron spectrometer designed for a precision measurement of the neutron $beta$-asymmetry with spin-polarized ultracold neutrons. The spectrometer consists of a 1.0-Tesla solenoidal field with two identical multiwire proportional chamber and plastic scintillator electron detector packages situated within 0.6-Tesla field-expansion regions. Select results from performance studies of the spectrometer with calibration sources are reported.
P. Schmidt-Wellenburg
,P. Geltenbort
,V.V. Nesvizhevsky
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(2007)
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"A source of ultra-cold neutrons for the gravitational spectrometer GRANIT"
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Philipp Schmidt-Wellenburg
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