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    Tang, Z; Blatnik, M; Broussard, L J; Choi, J H; Clayton, S M; Cude-Woods, C; Currie, S; Fellers, D E; Fries, E M; Geltenbort, P; Gonzalez, F; Hickerson, K P; Ito, T M; Liu, C-Y; MacDonald, S W T; Makela, M; Morris, C L; O'Shaughnessy, C M; Pattie, R W; Plaster, B; Salvat, D J; Saunders, A; Wang, Z; Young, A R; Zeck, B A

    Physical review letters, 2018-Jul-13, Letnik: 121, Številka: 2
    Journal Article

    Fornal and Grinstein recently proposed that the discrepancy between two different methods of neutron lifetime measurements, the beam and bottle methods, can be explained by a previously unobserved dark matter decay mode, n→X+γ. We perform a search for this decay mode over the allowed range of energies of the monoenergetic γ ray for X to be dark matter. A Compton-suppressed high-purity germanium detector is used to identify γ rays from neutron decay in a nickel-phosphorous-coated stainless-steel bottle. A combination of Monte Carlo and radioactive source calibrations is used to determine the absolute efficiency for detecting γ rays arising from the dark matter decay mode. We exclude the possibility of a sufficiently strong branch to explain the lifetime discrepancy with 97% confidence.