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Muon capture in ²⁸Si

University of British Columbia

A measurement has been made of the angular correlation of the neutrino with a specific nuclear de-excitation γ-ray following exclusive muon capture on ²⁸Si , in order to determine the size of the induced-pseudoscalar coupling constant gp of the weak hadronic current. The correlation is observed via the Doppler-broadened line shape of the 1229 keV ²⁸ Al γ-ray, which is measured using a pair of Comptonsuppressed intrinsic Ge detectors. Significant background suppression is achieved through the use of a coincidence technique in which the 1229 keV γ-ray of interest is 'tagged' by the subsequent 942 keV γ-ray in the cascade, which is detected in an array of 24 NaI(Tl) scintillators. Through a detailed attention to the detectors' response functions as well as the use of background-subtracted spectra, the γ — v correlation coefficient a is found to be 0.360±0.059 i n good agreement with a recent measurement at Dubna. The result obtained yields the value of gp/gA = 0.0±3.2 when compared to the latest calculation of the γ — v angular correlation, suggesting a massive quenching of the induced-pseudoscalar coupling constant in 2 8 S i in comparison with the value expected for a free nucleon. However other available calculations give the values gp/gA — 5.3±2.0 and gp/gA = 4.2±2.5, but the model-dependence of these intriguing results has yet to be assessed fully. A measurement of the correlation coefficient a of the 2171 keV ( 1⁺ → 2⁺) γ-ray has solved the enigma of the unphysical result that was found by a previous experiment. In addition, the lifetime of the 2201 keV ²⁸ Al level has been measured

Thesis/Dissertation

application/pdf

2009-02-19

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/4806

Physics

University of British Columbia

UBCV

DSpace