Evaluation of commercial nickel-phosphorus coating for ultracold neutron guides using a pinhole bottling method

Abstract

We report on the evaluation of commercial electroless nickel phosphorus (NiP) coatings for ultracold neutron (UCN) transport and storage. The material potential of 50~$\mu$m thick NiP coatings on stainless steel and aluminum substrates was measured to be $V_F=213(5.2)$~neV using the time-of-flight spectrometer ASTERIX at the Lujan Center. The loss per bounce probability was measured in pinhole bottling experiments carried out at ultracold neutron sources at Los Alamos Neutron Science Center and the Institut Laue-Langevin. For these tests a new guide coupling design was used to minimize gaps between the guide sections. The observed UCN loss in the bottle was interpreted in terms of an energy independent effective loss per bounce, which is the appropriate model when gaps in the system and upscattering are the dominate loss mechanisms, yielding a loss per bounce of $1.3(1)\times 10^{-4}$. We also present a detailed discussion of the pinhole bottling methodology and an energy dependent analysis of the experimental results.

arXiv comment13 pages, 14 figures

References in corpus (10)

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Cited by in corpus (8)

• Electric Dipole Moments of the Atoms, Molecules, Nuclei and Particles
• Performance of the upgraded ultracold neutron source at Los Alamos National Laboratory and its implication for a possible neutron electric dipole moment experiment
• Search for the Neutron Decay n$\to$ X+$\gamma$ where X is a dark matter particle
• Characterization of electroless nickel-phosphorus plating for ultracold-neutron storage
• A diffuse scattering model of ultracold neutrons on wavy surfaces
• Ultracold Neutron Properties of the Eljen-299-02D deuterated scintillator
• Characterization of the new Ultracold Neutron beamline at the LANL UCN facility
• Fill and dump measurement of the neutron lifetime using an asymmetric magneto-gravitational trap