We report on the fabrication and use of deuterated polyethylene (dPE) as a coating material for ultra-cold neutron (UCN) storage and transport. The Fermi potential has been determined to be 214~neV and the wall loss coefficient $eta$ is 1.3$cdot$10$^
4$ per wall collision. The coating technique allows for a wide range of applications and new possibilities in this field of physics. In particular, flexible and quasi-massless UCN guides with slit-less shutters and slit-less UCN storage volumes become possible. These properties enable the use in next-generation measurements of the electric dipole moment of the neutron.
An increasing number of measurements in fundamental and applied physics rely on magnetically shielded environments with sub nano-Tesla residual magnetic fields. State of the art magnetically shielded rooms (MSRs) consist of up to seven layers of high
permeability materials in combination with highly conductive shields. Proper magnetic equilibration is crucial to obtain such low magnetic fields with small gradients in any MSR. Here we report on a scheme to magnetically equilibrate MSRs with a 10 times reduced duration of the magnetic equilibration sequence and a significantly lower magnetic field with improved homogeneity. For the search of the neutrons electric dipole moment, our finding corresponds to a linear improvement in the systematic reach and a 40 % improvement of the statistical reach of the measurement. However, this versatile procedure can improve the performance of any MSR for any application.
We describe a sensor for the measurement of thin dielectric layers capable of operation in a variety of environments. The sensor is obtained by microfabricating a capacitor with interleaved aluminum fingers, exposed to the dielectric to be measured.
In particular, the device can measure thin layers of solid frozen from a liquid or gaseous medium. Sensitivity to single atomic layers is achievable in many configurations and, by utilizing fast, high sensitivity capacitance read out in a feedback system onto environmental parameters, coatings of few layers can be dynamically maintained. We discuss the design, read out and calibration of sever
