Published April 16, 2024 | Version Published
Journal Article Open

Novel Measurement of the Neutron Magnetic Form Factor from A=3 Mirror Nuclei

Abstract

The electromagnetic form factors of the proton and neutron encode information on the spatial structure of their charge and magnetization distributions. While measurements of the proton are relatively straightforward, the lack of a free neutron target makes measurements of the neutron’s electromagnetic structure more challenging and more sensitive to experimental or model-dependent uncertainties. Various experiments have attempted to extract the neutron form factors from scattering from the neutron in deuterium, with different techniques providing different, and sometimes large, systematic uncertainties. We present results from a novel measurement of the neutron magnetic form factor using quasielastic scattering from the mirror nuclei 3H and 3He, where the nuclear effects are larger than for deuterium but expected to largely cancel in the cross-section ratios. We extracted values of the neutron magnetic form factor for low-to-modest momentum transfer, 0.6<𝑄2<2.9  GeV2, where existing measurements give inconsistent results. The precision and 𝑄2 range of these data allow for a better understanding of the current world’s data and suggest a path toward further improvement of our overall understanding of the neutron’s magnetic form factor.

Copyright and License

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.

Errata

10 June 2024: Correction: The first sentence in the caption of Fig. 2 contained an error and has been fixed.

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PhysRevLett.132.162501.pdf

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Additional details

Identifiers

ISSN
1079-7114

Funding

United States Department of Energy
DE-AC02-05CH11231
United States Department of Energy
DE-FG02-88ER40410
United States Department of Energy
DE-SC0014168
United States Department of Energy
DE-SC0024665
United States Department of Energy
DE-FG02-96ER40950
United States Department of Energy
DE-SC0014168
United States Department of Energy
DE-AC05-06OR23177
National Science Foundation
NSF PHY-1714809
Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility
Science Committee of Republic of Armenia
21AG-1C085

Dates

Accepted
2024-02-21
Accepted paper
Updated
2024-06-10
Corrected paper

Caltech Custom Metadata

Publication Status
Published