Comparison of two experiments on radiative neutron decay

Abstract

Over 10 years ago we proposed an experiment on measuring the characteristics of radiative neutron decay in papers [1, 2]. At the same time we had published the theoretical spectrum of radiative gamma quanta, calculated within the framework of the electroweak interactions, on the basis of which we proposed the methodology for the future experiment [3, 4]. However, because we were denied beam time on the intensive cold neutron beam at ILL (Grenoble, France) for a number of years, we could only conduct the experiment in 2005 on the newly opened FRMII reactor of Technical University of Muenchen. The main result of this experiment was the discovery of radiative neutron decay and the measurement of its relative intensity B.R. = (3.2 ± 1.6) × 10⁻³ with C.L. = 99.7% for radiative gamma quanta with energy over 35 kev [5, 6]. Over a year after our first announcement about the results of the conducted experiment, “Nature” [7] published a letter asserting that its authors have also measured the branching ratio of radiative neutron decay B.R. = (3.13 ± 0.34) × 10⁻³ with c.l. = 68% and gamma quanta energy from 15 to 340 kev. This article aims to compare these two experiments. It is shown that the use of strong magnetic fields in the NIST (Washington, USA) experiment methodology not only prevents any exact measurement of the branching ratio and identification of radiative neutron decay events, but also makes registration of ordinary neutron decay events impossible.