One year after setting a Canadian record for ultracold neutron (UCN) production, a team of UWinnipeg physicists working in Vancouver have smashed the world record by more than sevenfold.
Dr. Jeff Martin, Dr. Russ Mammei and Dr. Blair Jamieson set the record in January at TRIUMF, Canada's particle accelerator centre, located in Vancouver, B.C. Their achievement was detailed in a paper published July 7.
The team produced ultracold neutrons at a rate of 6.7×10 neutrons per second. Other UCN facilities around the world average fewer than 1×10 neutrons per second.
"It's awesome! Physics works! A lot of pieces and hard work from many people had to come together to make this possible, including support and encouragement from the global UCN physics community," said Dr. Mammei. "Now let's do some cutting-edge precision physics with it!"
"This remarkable achievement is a testament to the creativity, perseverance, and collaborative spirit of our researchers," said Dr. Jitendra Paliwal , Vice-President, Research and Innovation. "By setting a new world benchmark in UCN production, Drs. Martin, Mammei, Jamieson, and their collaborators are advancing the frontiers of fundamental physics while showcasing the global impact of research conducted at UWinnipeg. Equally important, they are providing our students with the opportunity to contribute to discoveries that deepen our understanding of the universe."
The new global benchmark is the result of a decade of research and development at TRIUMF, where Dr. Martin is chair of the Science Council and leads the international TRIUMF Ultracold Advanced Neutron (TUCAN) collaboration.
Dr. Russ Mammei and Dr. Blair Jamieson also play key roles in the project, which involves international collaborator and co-lead Dr. Shinsuke Kawasaki of the High-Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) in Japan. Canadian collaborators include UBC, UManitoba, and UNBC.
Last year, when they broke the Canadian record for ultracold neutron production by threefold, Dr. Martin and his team knew the world record was within reach. The previous most intense sources, each with different capabilities, were located at Los Alamos National Lab in the USA, the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland, and the Institute Laue-Langevin in France.
"These results establish our ultracold neutron source as the best place in the world to do experiments, for the foreseeable future," said Dr. Martin.
Students like Tyrone Reimer, who works alongside Dr. Martin and Dr. Mammei, get an incredible opportunity to participate in cutting-edge, record-setting research.
"I am grateful to be a part of such an important project," Tyrone said. "As an undergraduate student, this opportunity has inspired me to continue working in physics after graduation."
Neutrons are extremely small, subatomic particles. To make them easier to measure and study, the team produces mind-boggling quantities of them.
Once separated from a nucleus, neutrons are almost impossible to contain moving at extreme speeds, reaching temperatures of a hundred billion degrees Celsius, and penetrating through materials.
However, once cooled, neutrons begin to take on new properties, making them easier to study and measure. Cooled neutrons move like a gas and bounce off materials rather than passing through them.
The team's work could help scientists more precisely measure the separation of electric charges within a neutron, called the electric dipole moment.
While precisely measuring the electric dipole moment of just one neutron is very difficult, repeated measurements allow researchers to build up a bank of statistics.
By measuring the properties of neutrons, physicists hope to deepen current understandings of how the universe was formed in particular, why the universe is made of matter instead of antimatter. Why normal' matter won out is a question that the leading theory, known as the Standard Model of Particle Physics, can't explain.
New technologies developed along the way could also lead to breakthroughs in other fields of science, such as lasers, magnetometry, material science, and cryogenics.
