Measurement of the Strong Interaction Shift and Width of the Ground State of Pionic Hydrogen

Hyperfine Interactions - An experiment to measure the strong interaction width (Γ1s ) and shift (ε1s ) of the ground state of pionic hydrogen (π?p), in order to determine the...     

Systematic analysis of the PSI experiment to directly measure the sticking probabilityω s in dt fusion

Starting in 1989 an experiment was run at PSI to directly measure the final sticking probability in muon catalyzed dt fusion. This experiment was based on an active-target ionization chamber (IC) built at Gatchina, Russia, and an array of plastic neutron counters. In three runs approximately 5×10⁶ isolated alpha signals were recorded with around one half of these occurring in the inner chamber region where we have more complete understanding of the systematic errors. Particularly from a long run in 1992 we were able to obtain a very clean sticking peak of some 5000 events. However, to reach an accurate value of sticking, all systematic effects and several major backgrounds had to be understood in detail. To this end a Monte Carlo code was written to simulate the full electrostatic environment of the IC and to recreate completely each signal type including the actual tritium decay noise from the live experiment. A slightly model dependent value of approx. 0.56±0.04% is obtained for final sticking.     

Feasibility of an experiment to determine the branching ratio for the emission of a heavy neutrino after muon capture in3He

The triton energy of the muon capture reaction ³He t+v, where ³ He is the ground state of muonic³He, has been measured in order to investigate a possible heavy v admixture into the flavour with high sensitivity. ³ He has been formed via the pd fusion reaction by stopping ^– in an ionization chamber (IC) filled with an H/D gas mixture of 3% D concentration at a pressure of 161 bar. In a first short experiment 650 triton events were observed yielding an upper limit for the -heavy v mixing strength of 2.3×10^–3 atE _0v=60 MeV.     

Survey of experimental results on μCF including hyperfine effects

Complementary to the investigations of the most efficient dt cycle, also the other muon-induced fusion cycles in mixtures of hydrogen isotopes have been studied. The results of these dedicated experiments provide rich information about muon-induced few-body reactions and contribute significantly to a better overall understanding of CF. A summary of the recent progress will be presented. Special emphasis will be put on two characteristic examples, namely a new experimental approach to study the muonic cascade in H-D mixtures and the systematic study of hyperfine effects in muon-induced reactions.     

The kinetics of muon-catalyzed dt fusion

A main source of information about the muon-catalyzed fusion cycle in D-T mixtures are the cycling rates _c, which are characteristic for the kinetic equilibrium of states attained rapidly in dense targets. The measurement, analysis and interpretation of these rates will be discussed, concentrating on the extensive set of rates observed at PSI over the last decade in gaseous, liquid and solid targets.Invited talk presented by Peter Kammel.     

Präzisionsmessung des Al27 (n, α)-Wirkungsquerschnitts für 14,43 MeV-Neutronen

A precision measurement of the Al²⁷(n, α) Na²⁴ — cross-section for 14.43 MeV was performed. Aluminium samples were irridiated in an accurately known neutron flux determined by the associated particle method. The induced Na²⁴ activity was measured with a scintillation detector accurately calibrated by means of Na²⁴ standards by the β-γ-coincidence method. By means of careful minimizing all sources of systematic errors an overall accuracy of 0.7% on a 99.5 (3 σ) confidence level was obtained. The measurements result in a cross-section of 117.0 mb for Al²⁷(n, α)Na²⁴ for neutrons of an average energy of 14.43 MeV and an energy width of approximately 0.2 MeV.     

Muon transfer from ground state deuterium to helium nuclei and its temperature dependence

The energy and time distributions of the decay X-rays of excited, metastable, molecular (dμHe)*-resonances were measured. The comparison of the observed energy spectra with calculated ones suggests that decay from the rotational state J = 1 dominates at the investigated conditions. The muon transfer rates from ground state deuterium to the helium isotopes ³He and ⁴He at low temperatures were determined from the time distributions of these spectra. Additionally, the temperature dependence of the muon transfer rate was clearly established in deuterium / ⁴He mixtures. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Experimental investigation of the muon transfer reaction from deuterium to helium isotopes

Muon transfer from the ground state of muonic deuterium to a helium atom proceeds mainly via the formation of a muonic molecule in an excited state. A large number of decay X rays ( 6.8 keV) from these (dµHe)^* molecules were observed for the⁴He as well as for the³He case. The time distributions of these X rays allow the determination of the ground state transfer rate. The simultaneous employment of Ge/Si-detectors and CCDs for the same target conditions allows the determination of the branching ratio of radiative to nonradiative decay for the first time.     

Precision measurement of nuclear muon capture by3He

In this article we report the results of an experiment performed in 1993 at PSI. The goal was to determine the absolute rate of nuclear muon capture by³He. In the experiment we used a new technique recently developed at Gatchina. As a preliminary result from this experiment we obtained _c=(1496±3(stat)-3(syst)) s^–1.