The Neutron Lifetime

Abstract

The decay of the free neutron into a proton, electron, and antineutrino is the prototype semileptonic weak decay and the simplest example of nuclear beta decay. The nucleon vector and axial vector weak coupling constants G_V and G_A determine the neutron lifetime as well as the strengths of weak interaction processes involving free neutrons and protons that are important in astrophysics, cosmology, solar physics and neutrino detection. In combination with a neutron decay angular correlation measurement, the neutron lifetime can be used to determine the first element of the CKM matrix Vud. Unfortunately the two main experimental methods for measuring the neutron lifetime currently disagree by almost 4 sigma. I will present a brief review of the status of the neutron lifetime and prospects for the future.