Initial Tests Of The Pion Beta Decay Detector

1.3 Neutron decay

Neutrons are hadrons comprised of up and down quarks. Neutron decay, however, is a weak process and thus involves the matrix element . Extracting from neutron decay requires not only an experiment to measure the neutron lifetime, but also an experiment to measure the -asymmetry of polarized neutron decays. Data from both such experiments have been used to perform the unitarity test of (1.7) [Tow 95]

which is significantly greater than unity.

1.3.1 Nuclear beta decay