Offline Commissioning of the St. Benedict Gas Catcher

TL;DR

This paper reports on the offline commissioning of a large-volume gas catcher for the St. Benedict experiment, achieving high transport efficiency, which is crucial for precise measurements of beta decay transitions to probe the Standard Model.

Contribution

It presents the design, implementation, and successful offline commissioning of the gas catcher system for the St. Benedict experiment, enabling high-efficiency ion transport.

Findings

Transport efficiency over 95% at pressures below 66 mbar

Successful offline commissioning using a potassium source

Readiness for in-flight measurements of beta decay transitions

Abstract

Precision measurements of $\beta$ decay transitions offer a promising channel through which the Standard Model (SM) can be probed. There is currently an ongoing effort to increase the precision on measurements of $\mathcal{F}t$-values for superallowed $\beta$ decay transitions between mirror nuclides. These allow for a determination of $V_{ud}$ which is complementary to that obtained from pure Fermi $0^+ \rightarrow 0^+$ transitions. The Superallowed Transition BEta-NEutrino Decay Ion Coincidence Trap (St. Benedict), under construction at the Nuclear Science Laboratory (NSL) at the University of Notre Dame, seeks to measure the Fermi-to-Gamow-Teller mixing ratio for transitions between mirror nuclei in order to expand the list of nuclides from which $V_{ud}$ can be extracted. Production and selection of the species of interest will be done in-flight, using the \textit{TwinSol} magnetic separator system. The first element of St. Benedict will be a large volume gas catcher which will thermalize radioactive ion beams for low energy delivery to the rest of the system. Offline commissioning of this gas catcher has been completed using an internal potassium source, and the device demonstrated a transport efficiency upwards of 95\% for pressures of 66 mbar and lower.