2018-06-05 Press Release

Jason Chang (iTHEMS/LBNL) and his colleagues have enlisted powerful supercomputers to calculate a quantity known as the "nucleon axial coupling," – which is central to our understanding of a neutron’s lifetime – with an unprecedented precision. Their method offers a clear path to further improvements that may help to resolve the experimental discrepancy of the lifetime of neutrons as well as to learn about as-yet undiscovered physics. The paper was published was published online May 30 in the journal Nature.

Reference

  1. C. C. Chang, A. N. Nicholson, E. Rinaldi, E. Berkowitz, N. Garron, D. A. Brantley, H. Monge-Camacho, C. J. Monahan, C. Bouchard, M. A. Clark, B. Joó, T. Kurth, K. Orginos, P. Vranas & A. Walker-Loud, A per-cent-level determination of the nucleon axial coupling from quantum chromodynamics, Nature 558, 91–94 (2018), doi: 10.1038/s41586-018-0161-8

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