Speaker
Description
The neutron electric and magnetic polarizabilities are essential inputs for precision calculations, such as the Lamb shift of muonic atoms.
Yet the absence of free neutron targets severely limits the precision of existing measurements. As a result, uncertainties in the neutron polarizabilities dominate many theoretical error budgets, often exceeding the corresponding experimental uncertainties.
An established method to infer neutron polarizabilities uses deuteron photodisintegration near the neutron quasi-free peak. We explore the feasibility of using this reaction, $\gamma d \to pn e ^+ e^-$ with quasi-free neutron kinematics, to get an improved extraction of the neutron polarizabilities in the context of a low-energy, high-intensity experiment.
In addition, we identify an overlap between kinematic regions relevant for polarizability extraction and for searches of new light bosons in the 10–100 MeV mass range. Given the growing interest in light mediator models—which may give rise to such bosons—we extend our previous work, in which we built a framework to obtain bounds on the coupling of the neutron to a new light boson using deuteron photodisintegration.
