Measurement of the Free Neutron Lifetime using the Neutron Spectrometer on NASA's Lunar Prospector Mission

Abstract

We use data from the Lunar Prospector Neutron Spectrometer to make the second space-based measurement of the free neutron lifetime finding ${\tau }_n=887\pm 14_{\text{stat}}{}_{-3\text{syst}}^{+7}$ s, which is within 1$\sigma$ of the accepted value. This measurement expands the range of planetary bodies where the neutron lifetime has been quantified from space, and by extending the modeling to account for non-uniform elemental composition, we mitigated a significant source of systematic uncertainty on the previous space-based lifetime measurement. This modeling moves space-based neutron lifetime measurement towards the ultimate goal of reducing the magnitude of the systematics on a future space-measurement to the level of those seen in laboratory-based experiments.

10 pages, 9 figures, 2 tables, accepted in PRC; revised modeling and systematic error analysis following referee's suggestion, reduced uncertainties

References in corpus (2)

• Space-Based Measurement of the Neutron Lifetime using Data from the Neutron Spectrometer on NASA's MESSENGER Mission
• Space-based Measurements of Neutron Lifetime: Approaches to Resolving the Neutron Lifetime Anomaly