A Highly Segmented Neutron Polarimeter for A1

TL;DR

This paper presents a new highly segmented neutron polarimeter designed to improve the measurement accuracy of the neutron's electric form factor at MAMI, featuring enhanced granularity, faster readout, and improved precision.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel neutron polarimeter with significant design improvements, including higher segmentation and advanced readout technology, reducing measurement errors.

Findings

Successful deployment during 2019 measurement campaign

Achieved improved measurement precision of the neutron electric form factor

Demonstrated effective performance with liquid hydrogen and deuterium targets

Abstract

A new neutron polarimeter for measuring the neutron's electric form factor was designed and constructed to complement the A1 spectrometer setup at the Mainz Microtron (MAMI). The design is based on a previous polarimeter with significant improvements to halve the error of the extracted form factor. A higher granularity of the polarimeter sections and a deeper first section on the one hand, and a faster readout employing Time-over-Threshold methods to measure the signal amplitudes combined with a high-precision FPGA-based TDC on the other hand will allow to achieve this goal. The performance of the new polarimeter during a first measurement campaign in 2019 using liquid hydrogen and deuterium targets will be discussed.