We present a new powerful liquid hydrogen target developed for the precise study of parity violating electron scattering on hydrogen and deuterium. This target has been designed to have minimal target density fluctuations under the heat load of a 20$mu$A CW 854.3 MeV electron beam without rastering the electron beam. The target cell has a wide aperture for scattered electrons and is axially symmetric around the beam axis. The construction is optimized to intensify heat exchange by a transverse turbulent mixing in the hydrogen stream, which is directed along the electron beam. The target is constructed as a closed loop circulating system cooled by a helium refrigerator. It is operated by a tangential mechanical pump with an optional natural convection mode. The cooling system supports up to 250 watts of the beam heating removal. Deeply subcooled liquid hydrogen is used for keeping the in-beam temperature below the boiling point. The target density fluctuations are found to be at the level 10$^{-3}$ at a beam current of 20 $mu$A.
A water Cherenkov luminosity monitor system with associated electronics has been developed for the A4 parity violation experiment at MAMI. The detector system measures the luminosity of the hydrogen target hit by the MAMI electron beam and monitors the stability of the liquid hydrogen target. Both is required for the precise study of the count rate asymmetries in the scattering of longitudinally polarized electrons on unpolarized protons. Any helicity correlated fluctuation of the target density leads to false asymmetries. The performance of the luminosity monitor, investigated in about 2000 hours with electron beam, and the results of its application in the A4 experiment are presented.
A 280 ml liquid hydrogen target has been constructed and tested for the MUSE experiment at PSI to investigate the proton charge radius via simultaneous measurement of elastic muon-proton and elastic electron-proton scattering. To control systematic uncertainties at a sub-percent level, strong constraints were put on the amount of material surrounding the target and on its temperature stability. The target cell wall is made of $120,mu$m-thick Kapton, while the beam entrance and exit windows are made of $125,mu$m-thick aluminized Kapton. The side exit windows are made of Mylar laminated on aramid fabric with an areal density of $368,$g/m$^2$. The target system was successfully operated during a commissioning run at PSI at the end of 2018. The target temperature was stable at the 0.01 K level. This suggests a density stability at the $0.02,$% level, which is about a factor of ten better than required.
The MuCap experiment is a high-precision measurement of the rate for the basic electroweak process of muon capture, mu- + p -> n + nu . The experimental approach is based on an active target consisting of a time projection chamber (TPC) operating with pure hydrogen gas. The hydrogen has to be kept extremely pure and at a stable pressure. A Circulating Hydrogen Ultrahigh Purification System was designed at the Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute (PNPI) to continuously clean the hydrogen from impurities. The system is based on an adsorption cryopump to stimulate the hydrogen flow and on a cold adsorbent for the hydrogen cleaning. It was installed at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in 2004 and performed reliably during three experiment runs. During several months long operating periods the system maintained the hydrogen purity in the detector on the level of 20 ppb for moisture, which is the main contaminant, and of better than 7 ppb and 5 ppb for nitrogen and oxygen, respectively. The pressure inside the TPC was stabilized to within 0.024% of 10 bar at a hydrogen flow rate of 3 standard liters per minute.
Significant progress has been made to experimentally determine a complete set of the parity-violating (PV) weak-interaction amplitudes between nucleons. In this paper we describe the design, construction and operation of the n$^3$He experiment that was used to measure the PV asymmetry $A_{mathrm{PV}}$ in the direction of proton emission in the reaction $vec{mathrm{n}} + {^3}mathrm{He} rightarrow {^3}mathrm{H} + mathrm{p}$, using the capture of polarized cold neutrons in an unpolarized gaseous $^3mathrm{He}$ target. This asymmetry has was recently calculated cite{Viviani,Viviani2}, both in the traditional style meson exchange picture, and in effective field theory (EFT), including two-pion exchange. The high precision result (published separately) obtained with the experiment described herein forms an important benchmark for hadronic PV (HPV) theory in few-body systems, where precise calculations are possible. To this day, HPV is still one of the most poorly understood aspects of the electro-weak theory. The calculations estimate the size of the asymmetry to be in the range of $(-9.4 rightarrow 3.5)times 10^{-8}$, depending on the framework or model. The small size of the asymmetry and the small overall goal uncertainty of the experiment of $delta A_{mathrm{PV}} simeq 1times10^{-8}$ places strict requirements on the experiment, especially on the design of the target-detector chamber. In this paper we describe the experimental setup and the measurement methodology as well as the detailed design of the chamber, including results of Garfield++ and Geant4 simulations that form the basis of the chamber design and analysis. We also show data from commissioning and production and define the systematic errors that the chamber contributes to the measured $A_{mathrm{PV}}$. We give the final uncertainty on the measurement.
A compact Liquid-Lithium Target (LiLiT) was built and tested with a high-power electron gun at Soreq Nuclear Research Center. The lithium target, to be bombarded by the high-intensity proton beam of the Soreq Applied Research Accelerator Facility (SARAF), will constitute an intense source of neutrons produced by the 7Li(p,n)7Be reaction for nuclear astrophysics research and as a pilot setup for accelerator-based Boron Neutron Capture Therapy (BNCT). The liquid-lithium jet target acts both as neutron-producing target and beam dump by removing the beam thermal power (>5 kW, >1 MW/cm3) with fast transport. The target was designed based on a thermal model, accompanied by a detailed calculation of the 7Li(p,n) neutron yield, energy distribution and angular distribution. Liquid lithium is circulated through the target loop at ~200oC and generates a stable 1.5 mm-thick film flowing at a velocity up to 7 m/s onto a concave supporting wall. Electron beam irradiation demonstrated that the liquid-lithium target can dissipate electron power areal densities of > 4 kW/cm2 and volume power density of ~ 2 MW/cm3 at a lithium flow of ~4 m/s while maintaining stable temperature and vacuum conditions. The LiLiT setup is presently in online commissioning stage for high-intensity proton beam irradiation (1.91- 2.5 MeV, 1-2 mA) at SARAF.