Measurements at Low Energies of the Polarization-Transfer Coefficient for the Reaction HHe at

Abstract.

Measurements of the transverse polarization-transfer coefficient for the reaction HHe are reported for outgoing neutron energies of 1.94, 5.21, and 5.81 MeV. This reaction is important both as a source of polarized neutrons for nuclear-physics experiments, and as a test of theoretical descriptions of the nuclear four-body system. Comparison is made to previous measurements, confirming that the HHe reaction can be used as a polarized neutron source with the polarization known to an accuracy of approximately 5%. Comparison to R-matrix theory suggests that the sign of the phase-shift parameter is incorrect. Changing the sign of this parameter dramatically improves the agreement between theory and experiment.