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Magnetic anomaly in UCN trapping: signal for neutron oscillations to parallel world?

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  • Published: 11 April 2012
  • Volume 72, article number 1974, (2012)
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Magnetic anomaly in UCN trapping: signal for neutron oscillations to parallel world?
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  • Zurab Berezhiani1,2 &
  • Fabrizio Nesti1 

  • 1784 Accesses

  • 44 Citations

  • 35 Altmetric

  • 6 Mentions

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Abstract

Present experiments do not exclude that the neutron n oscillates, with an appreciable probability, into its invisible degenerate twin from a parallel world, the so-called mirror neutron n′. These oscillations were searched experimentally by monitoring the neutron losses in ultra-cold neutron traps, where they can be revealed by the magnetic field dependence of n–n′ transition probability. In this work we reanalyze the experimental data acquired by the group of A.P. Serebrov at Institute Laue–Langevin, and find a dependence at more than 5σ away from the null hypothesis. This anomaly can be interpreted as oscillation of neutrons to mirror neutrons with a timescale of few seconds, in the presence of a mirror magnetic field order 0.1 G at the Earth. This result, if confirmed by future experiments, will have deepest consequences for fundamental particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Fisica, Università dell’Aquila, Via Vetoio, 67100, Coppito, L’Aquila, Italy

    Zurab Berezhiani & Fabrizio Nesti

  2. INFN, Laboratori Nazionali Gran Sasso, 67010, Assergi, L’Aquila, Italy

    Zurab Berezhiani

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  1. Zurab Berezhiani
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Correspondence to Zurab Berezhiani.

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Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Berezhiani, Z., Nesti, F. Magnetic anomaly in UCN trapping: signal for neutron oscillations to parallel world?. Eur. Phys. J. C 72, 1974 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-012-1974-5

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  • Received: 02 March 2012

  • Published: 11 April 2012

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-012-1974-5

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Keywords

  • Dark Matter
  • Sterile Neutrino
  • Hide Sector
  • Baryon Asymmetry
  • Ultracold Neutron
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