Concept and strategy of SuperSUN: A new ultracold neutron converter

Abstract

A new source of ultracold neutrons (UCNs), developed at the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) and named SuperSUN, is currently being commissioned. Its operational principle is the conversion of cold neutrons, delivered by ILL’s existing beam H523, to UCNs in a vessel filled with superfluid helium-4, wherein the neutron’s energy and momentum are transferred by inelastic scattering to phonons in the superfluid. The inverse Boltzmann-suppressed process is negligible at temperatures below 0.6 K, enabling long storage times and high in-situ UCN densities as demonstrated at the ILL for two prototype sources. These two prototypes are installed at secondary beams behind crystal monochromators, whereas a primary beam with a white cold spectrum illuminates the SuperSUN conversion volume. This provides not only higher intensity around the wavelength 0.89 nm where the dominant single-phonon process for UCN production takes place, but also a contribution to UCN production by multi-phonon processes. In the first phase of the project, material walls will trap the UCNs, while in the second phase an octupole magnet will generate a 2.1 T magnetic field at the edge of the conversion volume. For low-field-seeking UCNs, this field increases the trapping potential and reduces wall losses so that the accumulated UCNs are spin-polarized as a result. SuperSUN aims to deliver the highest possible UCN densities to external storage experiments, the first of which will be the PanEDM experiment measuring the neutron’s permanent electric dipole moment.