Monday, 9 December 2024

Neutron Lifetime Puzzle

The neutron lifetime puzzle is that neutrons in beam have a lifetime of around 887 sec, while neutrons trapped in a magnetic bottle have a lifetime 1% less of around 877 secs. In https://arxiv.org/pdf/1906.10024 Giacosa and Pagliara suggest resolving this through the quantum zero effect, to do so some new physics must be observing or interacting with the neutron in a bottle, every billionth of a second. Consider a neutrino background interacting with the axial force with strength 1/10000, we might have 1*10^17 neutrinos per cubic centimeter and the range might of the force might be 5nm. I each 5nm cubic there would be = 0.01 neutrinos, but they would be travelling new light speed, so in 10^-9 secconds, about 0.3 would pass. Giving approximately the correct amount of lifetime reduction, and better a good fit if the density was 3 time larger at 3*10^17 neutrino. Experimentally this could be confirmed by having a magnetic bottle far neutron or proton rich material to reduce the neutrion background. A magnesium 24 magnetic bottle held in a vacuum in a large room might remove a lot of the neutrion background, leaving the results near the beam decay rate. Indeed such neutron decay in a magnetic bottle might be a excellent detector of the density of a neutrino background.

No comments: