Production of ultra cold neutrons by a doppler shifter with pulsed neutrons at J-PARC

Abstract

Ultracold neutrons (UCNs) are neutrons whose kinetic energy is around a few hundred nanoelectronvolts. Neutrons with such small kinetic energy can be trapped in a material vessel or magnetic fields. Because of these unique characteristics, UCNs are used for some important experiments of fundamental physics. The Doppler shifter is a device to produce UCN by slowing them down by the reflection on a mirror moving with half of the velocity of incoming neutrons. A Doppler shifter using a quadruple-stack of monochromatic supermirrors that reflects neutrons with a velocity around 68m/s [1, Hino et al.(2010)] was fabricated, and operated with a pulsed neutron source of J-PARC. An important feature of the Doppler shifter is the use of a pulsed neutron beam. Unlike in continuous neutron beams, the neutron velocity can be selected by choosing a time slice in a pulsed neutron bunch. Thus the UCN production improves by ~80 times in the case of J-PARC. We successfully produced the UCNs by the Doppler shifter: the measured UCN production rate is consistent with the simulations.