Search

Cyclotron Radiation Emission Spectroscopy (CRES) is a technique for measuring the kinetic energy of charged particles through a precision measurement of the frequency of the cyclotron radiation generated by the particle's motion in a magnetic field. The Project 8 collaboration is developing a next-generation neutrino mass measurement experiment based on CRES. One approach is to use a phased antenna array, which surrounds a volume of tritium gas, to detect and measure the cyclotron radiation of the resulting β-decay electrons. To validate the feasibility of this method, Project 8 has designed a test stand to benchmark the performance of an antenna array at reconstructing signals that mimic those of genuine CRES events. To generate synthetic CRES events, a novel probe antenna has been developed, which emits radiation with characteristics similar to the cyclotron radiation produced by charged particles in magnetic fields. This paper outlines the design, construction, and characterization of this Synthetic Cyclotron Antenna (SYNCA). Furthermore, we perform a series of measurements that use the SYNCA to test the position reconstruction capabilities of the digital beamforming reconstruction technique. We find that the SYNCA produces radiation with characteristics closely matching those expected for cyclotron radiation and reproduces experimentally the phenomenology of digital beamforming simulations of true CRES signals.

The half-life of the $^{20}\mathrm{F}$ ground state was measured using a radioactive beam implanted in a plastic scintillator and recording $\ensuremath{\beta}\ensuremath{\gamma}$ coincidences together with four CsI(Na) detectors. The result, ${T}_{1/2}=11.0011{(69)}_{\mathrm{stat}}{(30)}_{\mathrm{sys}}$ s, is at variance by 17 combined standard deviations with the two most precise results. The present value revives the poor consistency of results for this half-life and calls for a new measurement, with a technique having different sources of systematic effects, to clarify the discrepancy.

Sensitive searches for exotic scalar and tensor couplings in nuclear and neutron decays involve precision measurements of the shape of the β-energy spectrum. We have performed a high statistics measurement of the β-energy spectrum in the allowed Gamow-Teller decay of 6He with the aim to first find evidence of the contribution due to the weak magnetism form factor. We review here the motivation, describe the principle of the measurement, summarize the theoretical corrections to the allowed phase space, and anticipate the expected statistical precision.