A Detailed Analysis and Monte Carlo Simulation of the Neutron Lifetime Experiment S. Arzumanov et al., Phys. Lett. B 483 (2000) 15

TL;DR

This paper analyzes and simulates a neutron lifetime experiment, identifying overlooked effects that could significantly alter the reported lifetime, thereby addressing discrepancies with other measurements.

Contribution

It provides a detailed Monte Carlo simulation revealing unaccounted effects in a neutron lifetime experiment, suggesting a correction to the previously reported results.

Findings

Identified effects not considered in the original experiment

Estimated a correction of -5.5 seconds to the neutron lifetime

Proposed a revised neutron lifetime of approximately 879.9 seconds

Abstract

We performed a detailed analysis and the Monte Carlo simulation of the neutron lifetime experiment [S. Arzumanov et al., Phys. Lett. B 483 (2000) 15] because of the strong disagreement by 5.6 standard deviations between the results of this experiment and our experiment [A. Serebrov et al., Phys. Lett. B 605 (2005) 72]. We found a few effects which were not taken into account in the experiment [S. Arzumanov et al., Phys. Lett. B 483 (2000) 15]. The possible correction is -5.5 s with uncertainty of 2.4 s which comes from initial data knowledge. We assume that after taking into account this correction the result of work [S. Arzumanov et al., Phys. Lett. B 483 (2000) 15] for neutron lifetime 885.4 +/- 0.9stat +/- 0.4syst s could be corrected to 879.9 +/- 0.9stat +/- 2.4syst s.