Abstract
We report experiments on the production of ultracold neutrons (UCN) in a converter of superfluid helium coated with fluorinated grease (fomblin). We employed our special technique of window-free extraction of accumulated UCN from the superfluid helium, in which they were produced by downscattering neutrons of a cold beam from the Munich research reactor. The fomblin-coating reduced the time constant for UCN passage through the extraction hole by a factor three compared to our previous experiment employing an uncoated stainless steel vessel. A time-of-flight measurement of the cold neutron spectrum incident on the converter, combined with a gold foil activation, allowed us to determine both the single-phonon and multi-phonon contributions to the UCN production. The UCN production rate is in reasonable agreement with the theoretical expectation.
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Zimmer, O., Schmidt-Wellenburg, P., Fertl, M. et al. Ultracold neutrons extracted from a superfluid-helium converter coated with fluorinated grease. Eur. Phys. J. C 67, 589–599 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-010-1327-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-010-1327-1