Measurement of the neutron lifetime in a magnetic storage ring

In previous papers a storage ring for neutrons was reported, which enables the confinement of very slow neutrons by means of their magnetic moment in a magnetic multipole torus. Improved experimental conditions permitted to determine the life-time of the stored neutrons by measuring their number with good accuracy up to one hour. After an initial phase the decrease with time follows very well a single exponential function with a time constant τ=877±10s. As explained in the paper this number represents the lifetime of the free neutron within the given errors.