Ultracold Neutron Production at the Second Spallation Target of the Paul Scherrer Institute

Abstract

The ultracold neutron (UCN) source at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), Switzerland has started full beam operation in mid 2011. Since then, continuous improvements have led to an UCN intensity increase by about a factor of 80 in comparison to first beam on target. UCN delivery to two beam ports is now operating on a regular basis, with e.g. about 17 million UCN delivered to one experiment over the first 200 s with every 4 s long beam pulse operated in a 480 s interval.