Parity-violating neutron spin rotation in a liquid parahydrogen target

Our understanding of hadronic parity violation is far from clear despite nearly 50 years of theoretical and experimental progress. Measurements of low-energy parity-violating observables in nuclear systems are the only accessible means to study the flavor-conserving weak hadronic interaction. To reduce the uncertainties from nuclear effects, experiments in the few and two-body system are essential. The parity-violating rotation of the transverse neutron polarization vector about the momentum axis as the neutrons traverse a target material has been measured in heavy nuclei and few nucleon systems using reactor cold neutron sources. We describe here an experiment to measure the neutron spin-rotation in a parahydrogen target (n-p system) using pulsed cold-neutrons from the fundamental symmetries beam line at the Spallation Neutron Source under construction at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Duke Scholars

Author Diane M Markoff Physics