Search

This work presents the production and extraction of the short-lived radionuclide 6He in yet unmatched yields from the ISOLDE facility at CERN. It is the first report of 6He production using spallation neutrons via the 9Be(n, α)6He reaction. These neutrons are produced from the 1.4 GeV proton beam of the Proton Synchrotron Booster (PSB) striking a tungsten converter, and are impinging on a porous BeO material. The central position of 6He in future experiments is due to its role as a necessary radioactive nucleus to realize the β-beam at CERN, a next-generation facility to study neutrino oscillation parameters, and hence neutrino masses. In the β-beam scenario, an intense beam of radioactive 6He nuclei will be produced, accelerated to multi-GeV energies and stored in a dedicated storage ring. The resulting virtually mono-directional anti-neutrino beam from the decay of the stored 6He nuclei will be directed towards a remote underground neutrino detector. A similar beam of, e.g., 18Ne will provide neutrinos, an ideal concept to test CP violation in the neutrino sector. The results of the present experiment demonstrate for the first time that the necessary conditions for the realization of the proposed β-beam scheme with anti-neutrinos can be fulfilled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the Standard Model, the weak interaction of quarks and leptons is characterized by certain symmetry properties, such as maximal breaking of parity and favored helicity. These are related to the V − A structure of the weak interaction. These characteristics were discovered by studying correlations in the directions of the outgoing leptons in nuclear beta decays. Presently, correlation measurements in nuclear beta decays are intensively studied to probe for signatures for deviations from these couplings, which are an indication of Beyond Standard Model physics. We show that the structure of the energy spectrum of emitted electrons in unique first-forbidden β -decays is sensitive to the symmetries of the weak interaction, and thus can be used as a novel probe of physics beyond the standard model. Furthermore, the energy spectrum gives constraints both in the case of right and left couplings of the new beyond standard model currents. We show that a measurement with modest energy resolution of ≈ 20 keV is expected to lead to new constraints on beyond the standard model interactions with tensor couplings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]