Neutron dark decays have been suggested as a solution to the discrepancy between bottle and beam experiments, providing a dark matter candidate that can be searched for in halo nuclei. The free neutron in the final state following the decay of ^{6}He into ^{4}He+n+χ provides an exceptionally clean detection signature when combined with a high efficiency neutron detector. Using a high-intensity ^{6}He^{+} beam at Grand Accélérateur National d'Ions Lourds, a search for a coincident neutron signal resulted in an upper limit on a dark decay branching ratio of Br_{χ}≤4.0×10^{-10} (95% C.L.). Using the dark neutron decay model proposed originally by Fornal and Grinstein, we translate this into an upper bound on a dark neutron branching ratio of O(10^{-5}), improving over global constraints by one to several orders of magnitude depending on m_{χ}.

In the frame of the project MORA (Matter's Origin from the Radio Activity of trapped and oriented ions), a transparent axially symmetric radio-frequency ion trap (moratrap) was designed in order to measure the triple correlation parameter D in nuclear $$\beta $$ -decay of laser-polarised ions. The trap design was inspired from the lpctrap geometry, operated at GANIL from 2005 to 2013. In a real (non-ideal) Paul trap, the quadrupole electric potential is not perfect leading to instabilities in ion motion and therefore affecting the overall trapping efficiency. This paper presents a numerical method aiming to optimise the geometry of a trap. It is applied to moratrap in order to improve the trapping efficiency and to enlarge the axial transparent solid angle compared to lpctrap. In the whole optimisation process, numerical computation of electric potential and field was carried out using an electrostatic solver based on boundary element method (BEM). The optimisation consisted in minimising an objective function (fitness function) depending on higher order multipoles of the potential. Finally, systematic changes of trap dimensions and electrode displacements were applied to investigate geometrical effects on the potential quality.

Precise measurements of correlations in nuclear β decays are currently employed to probe the Standard Model. When the β particle and recoiling daughter ion are detected in coincidence, these measurements further allow the observation of the ion charge-state distribution which results from the atomic shakeoff process induced by the nuclear decay. This is of great interest for fundamental atomic physics. This paper presents the results obtained at GANIL by means of LPCTrap experiments with 6He1+, 35Ar1+ and 19Ne1+ ions. Comparison with theoretical values is also presented and suggests further investigations.

The MORA (M atter’s O rigin from the R adioA ctivity of trapped and oriented ions) project aims at measuring with unprecedented precision the D correlation in the nuclear beta decay of trapped and oriented ions. The D correlation offers the possibility to search for new CP-violating interactions, complementary to searches done at the LHC and with electric dipole moments. Technically, MORA uses an innovative in-trap orientation method which combines the high trapping efficiency of a transparent Paul trap with laser orientation techniques. The trapping, detection, and laser setups are under development. The project will first focus on the proof-of-principle of the in-trap laser orientation technique, before the actual measurement of the D correlation in the decay of 23Mg+ ions is undertaken firstly at JYFL and then later, at GANIL, with full sensitivity to new physics.

Beta - neutrino correlation measurements are key in the research of physics beyond the Standard Model. In pure Fermi beta transitions, the beta-neutrino correlation coefficient, alpha(beta nu), is sensitive to the presence of scalar currents. The present limits were established by experimental studies of various nuclear systems with allowed Fermi transitions. A new experiment to improve the constraints on scalar currents is being developed, by the WISArD collaboration at ISOLDE/CERN, where the aim is to measure the energy shift of the fi-delayed protons emitted from the isobaric analogue state of the Ar-32 ground state. To enhance the sensitivity, protons and positrons are guided by a strong magnetic field and measured in coincidence between the two detection configurations located on both sides of a catcher foil in which the radioactive samples are implanted. Kinematic energy shifts of the protons in coincidence with positrons, in the same or opposite hemisphere of the catcher foil, will be more or less pronounced as a function of the possible scalar current component of the weak interaction. Details of the apparatus and preliminary results of the experiment are presented.

. The LPCTrap experiment uses an open Paul trap which was built to enable precision measurements in the beta decay of radioactive ions. The initial goal was the precise measurement of the beta-neutrino angular correlation coefficient in the decay of 6 He . Its geometry results from a careful optimization of the harmonic potential created by cylindrical electrodes. It supersedes previously considered geometries that presented a smaller detection solid angle to the beta particle and the recoiling ion. We describe here the methods which were used for the potential optimization, and we present the measured performances in terms of trapping time, cloud size and temperature, and space charge related limits. The properties of the ion cloud at equilibrium are investigated by a simple numerical simulation using hard sphere collisions, which additionally gives insights on the trapping loss mechanism. The interpretation for the observed trapping lifetimes is further corroborated by a model recently developed for ion clouds in Paul traps. The open trap shall serve other projects. It is currently used for commissioning purpose in the TRAPSENSOR experiment and is also considered in tests of the Standard Model involving the beta decay of polarized 23 Mg and 39 Ca ion in the frame of the MORA experiment. The latter tests require in-trap polarization of the ions and further optimization of the trapping and detection setup. Based on the results of the simulations and of their interpretation, different improvements of the trapping setup are discussed.

The electron shakeoff of F-19 and Cl-35 atoms resulting from the beta(+) decay of Ne-19(+) and Ar-35(+) ions has been investigated using a Paul trap coupled to a time of flight recoil-ion spectrometer. The charge-state distributions of the recoiling daughter nuclei were compared to theoretical calculations based on the sudden approximation and accounting for subsequent Auger processes. The excellent agreement obtained for Cl-35 is not reproduced in F-19. The shortcoming is attributed to the inaccuracy of the independent particle model employed to calculate the primary shakeoff probabilities in systems with rather low atomic numbers. This calls for more elaborate calculations, including explicitly the electron-electron correlations.

A portable stereo gamma camera has been built, based on two hybrid pixelated detectors, each of them comprising a 1 mm thick CdTe substrate bump-bonded to the Timepix readout chip, a pixelated CMOS ASIC consisting of 256 x 256 pixels with 55 mu m pitch. The technique described in this paper allows the automatic estimation of the distances between the prototype and the located radioactive sources by using triangulation based on epipolar geometry. The 3-D Cartesian coordinates of the sources are provided even when they are hidden behind an occluding material, such as a wall, or inside a barrel. Furthermore, the combination of the prototype with a depth sensor enables a wide range of applications, including the 3-D volumetric reconstruction of the scene under study as well as the capability of autonomously determining if an object is occluding the located radioactive sources. We discuss here the main features of the whole methodology developed and we also present the experimental results obtained at laboratory scale.

* Normandie Univ, ENSICAEN, UNICAEN, CNRS/IN2P3, LPC Caen, 14000 Caen, France † CELIA, Univ. Bordeaux CNRS UMR 5107 CEA, F-33400 Talence, France ‡ KU Leuven, Instituut voor Kernen Stralingsfysica, B-3001 Leuven, Belgium § GANIL, CEA/DRF-CNRS/IN2P3, B.P. 55027, 14076 Caen, France ¶ CIMAP, CEA-CNRS-ENSICAEN-UNICAEN, Normandie Université, BP5133, F-14050 Caen Cedex 04, France & NSCL and Department of Physics and Astronomy, Michigan State University, East-Lansing, MI, USA Departemento de Fisica Atomica, Molecular y Nuclear, Universitad de Granada, Granada, Spain

Correlations between β decay products are sensitive observables to look for exotic contributions to the weak interaction excluded by the Standard Model of particle physics. To precisely measure the β – v angular correlation parameter, αβν, in 6He β decay, the radioactive atoms are trapped in a magneto-optical trap and the momentum of β particles and 6Li recoil ions are measured in coincidence. The shake-off process, leading to higher charge states of the Li, plays an important role in this observation and must be studied carefully. Its study provides stringent tests of the sudden approximation for atomic calculations in this few electron system.

The experimental achievements and the results obtained so far with the LPCTrap device installed at GANIL are presented. The apparatus is dedicated to the study of the weak interaction at low energy by means of precise measurements of the β − ν angular correlation parameter in nuclear β decays. So far, the data collected with three isotopes have enabled to determine, for the first time, the charge state distributions of the recoiling ions, induced by shakeoff process. The analysis is presently refined to deduce the correlation parameters, with the potential of improving both the constraint deduced at low energy on exotic tensor currents (6He1+) and the precision on the V ud element of the quark-mixing matrix (35Ar1+ and 19Ne1+) deduced from the mirror transitions dataset.

This article presents a short review of the main progresses achieved at the GANIL facilities during the last thirty years in the field of ion-atom and ion-diatomic molecule collisions. Thanks to the wide range of projectile energies and species available on the different beam lines of the facility, elementary processes such as electron capture, ionization and excitation have been extensively studied. Beside primary collision mechanisms, the relaxation processes of the collision partners after the collision have been another specific source of interest. Progresses on other fundamental processes such as Young type interferences induced by ion-molecule collisions or shake off ionization resulting from nuclear beta decay are also presented.

The influence of space-charge on ion cyclotron resonances and magnetron eigenfrequency in a gas-filled Penning ion trap has been investigated. Off-line measurements with K+39 using the cooling trap of the WITCH retardation spectrometer-based setup at ISOLDE/CERN were performed. Experimental ion cyclotron resonances were compared with ab initio Coulomb simulations and found to be in agreement. As an important systematic effect of the WITCH experiment, the magnetron eigenfrequency of the ion cloud was studied under increasing space-charge conditions. Finally, the helium buffer gas pressure in the Penning trap was determined by comparing experimental cooling rates with simulations.

The LPCTrap setup is a sensitive tool to measure the β − ν angular correlation coefficient, a β ν , which can yield the mixing ratio ρ of a β decay transition. The latter enables the extraction of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix element V u d . In such a measurement, the most relevant observable is the energy distribution of the recoiling daughter nuclei following the nuclear β decay, which is obtained using a time-of-flight technique. In order to maximize the precision, one can reduce the systematic errors through a thorough simulation of the whole set-up, especially with a correct model of the trapped ion cloud. This paper presents such a simulation package and focuses on the ion cloud features; particular attention is therefore paid to realistic descriptions of trapping field dynamics, buffer gas cooling and the N-body space charge effects.

Precise measurements in the β decay of the 35Ar nucleus enable to search for deviations from the Standard Model (SM) in the weak sector. These measurements enable either to check the CKM matrix unitarity or to constrain the existence of exotic currents rejected in the V-A theory of the SM. For this purpose, the β-ν angular correlation parameter, aβν, is inferred from a comparison between experimental and simulated recoil ion time-of-flight distributions following the quasi-pure Fermi transition of 35Ar1+ ions confined in the transparent Paul trap of the LPCTrap device at GANIL. During the last experiment, 1.5×106 good events have been collected, which corresponds to an expected precision of less than 0.5% on the aβν value. The required simulation is divided between the use of massive GPU parallelization and the GEANT4 toolkit for the source-cloud kinematics and the tracking of the decay products.