Professor Jeff Martin with the prototype UCN source in Japan
The
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) recently announced
that it has approved the grant application to fund a new international
user facility for Ultra-Cold Neutrons at TRIUMF. The project is a
collaborative effort among over a dozen Japanese, Canadian, and US
Institutions. Last year, the project completed several reviews at
TRIUMF by world experts. The project was highlighted in the
TRIUMF 5-Year Plan as a university initiative led in Canada by the
University of Winnipeg and the University of Manitoba. The group
was encouraged to seek funding for the project through the Canadian
Foundation for Innovation New Initiatives Fund (CFI NIF) and other
Japanese and international sources.
JSPS
has approved a total equivalent to $5 million Canadian, which the CFI
is expected to match in a decision to be announced before the end of
June. “This is the second time in TRIUMF’s history that the Japanese
have put forward funding for a Canadian project before any funding was
finalized by the Canadian government; the first example was TRIUMF’s M9
beam line,” said Tim Meyer, Head of Strategic Planning and
Communications for TRIUMF. “The Japanese are proving to be excellent
partners in this endeavor,” added Professor Jeff Martin, project
partner at the University of Winnipeg.
As
a result of this funding announcement, the Japanese component of the
project has already begun to move forward with activities for
explicitly siting the project at TRIUMF. These developments will take
place over the next two years, with efforts in Canada getting under way
as soon as federal funding is secured. According to Professor Martin,
the group is in the process of planning for a UCN data-taking run this
July in Osaka, Japan. “The new data we acquire will help us to address
some of the few remaining design questions for the source that would be
built at TRIUMF.”
Ultra
Cold Neutrons (UCN) are free neutrons that are moving very slowly
(typically less than 30km/h!), due to their low energies. “UCN are
interesting,” explained Professor Martin, “because, unlike fast-moving
neutrons, they are totally reflected from surfaces of a variety of
materials. This means that they can be stored in bottles for an
extended period of time (hundreds of seconds), allowing researchers to
measure their fundamental properties for much longer than they could
using earlier techniques.”
When
completed, the UCN source at TRIUMF will provide the highest density of
UCN in the world. It will enable a new generation of experiments on the
fundamental interactions of neutrons to be conducted with higher
precision than ever before. For example, the UCN source will allow
experimenters to precisely measure neutron beta decay and quantum
levels of neutrons in Earth’s gravitational field. The new UCN source
will also facilitate the search for the non-zero neutron electric
dipole moment (nEDM). This source will make a major impact on studies
of fundamental physics with UCN that would complement and enhance the
existing ISAC program at TRIUMF.
“The
TRIUMF UCN source would be a world-leading facility which would bring
in a new set of international users. The Japanese funding
commitment is clear evidence of this,” said Professor Martin.
By: Meghan Magee, Communications Assistant, with help from Jeff Martin, Assistant Professor of Physics, U Winnipeg.
Canada's National Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics
