Dark side of the neutron?
- Resource Type
- Article
- Authors
- Jenke, T.; Degenkolb, S.; Jentschel, M.; Nesvizhevsky, V.V.; Rebreyend, D.; Roccia, S.; Soldner, T.; Stutz, A.; Zimmer, O.; Fornal, Bartosz; Grinstein, Benjamín
- Source
- EPJ Web of Conferences. 10/20/2019, Vol. 219, pN.PAG-N.PAG. 6p.
- Subject
- *NEUTRON beams
*SELF-discrepancy
*PARTICLE physics
*BRANCHING ratios
*RADIOACTIVE decay
- Language
- ISSN
- 2101-6275
We discuss our recently proposed interpretation of the discrepancy between the bottle and beam neutron lifetime experiments as a sign of a dark sector. The difference between the outcomes of the two types of measurements is explained by the existence of a neutron dark decay channel with a branching fraction 1%. Phenomenologically consistent particle physics models for the neutron dark decay can be constructed and they involve a strongly self-interacting dark sector. We elaborate on the theoretical developments around this idea and describe the efforts undertaken to verify it experimentally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]