First Observation of Cyclotron Radiation from MeV-Scale e^{} following Nuclear Decay. Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • We present an apparatus for detection of cyclotron radiation yielding a frequency-based ^{} kinetic energy determination in the 5keV to 2.1MeV range, characteristic of nuclear decays. The cyclotron frequency of the radiating particles in a magnetic field is used to determine the energy precisely. Our work establishes the foundation to apply the cyclotron radiation emission spectroscopy (CRES) technique, developed by the Project 8 Collaboration, far beyond the 18-keV tritium endpoint region. We report initial measurements of ^{-}'s from ^{6}He and ^{+}'s from ^{19}Ne decays to demonstrate the broadband response of our detection system and assess potential systematic uncertainties for spectroscopy over the full (MeV) energy range. To our knowledge, this is the first direct observation of cyclotron radiation from individual highly relativistic 's in a waveguide. This work establishes the application of CRES to a variety of nuclei, opening its reach to searches for new physics beyond the TeV scale via precision -decay measurements.

published proceedings

  • Phys Rev Lett

author list (cited authors)

  • Byron, W., Harrington, H., Taylor, R. J., DeGraw, W., Buzinsky, N., Dodson, B., ... He6-CRES Collaboration.

complete list of authors

  • Byron, W||Harrington, H||Taylor, RJ||DeGraw, W||Buzinsky, N||Dodson, B||Fertl, M||García, A||Garvey, G||Graner, B||Guigue, M||Hayen, L||Huyan, X||Khaw, KS||Knutsen, K||McClain, D||Melconian, D||Müller, P||Novitski, E||Oblath, NS||Robertson, RGH||Rybka, G||Savard, G||Smith, E||Stancil, DD||Sternberg, M||Storm, DW||Swanson, HE||Tedeschi, JR||VanDevender, BA||Wietfeldt, FE||Young, AR||Zhu, X

publication date

  • August 2023