Is the Unitarity of the quark-mixing-CKM-matrix violated in neutron $β$-decay?

Abstract

We report on a new measurement of neutron $β$-decay asymmetry. From the result \linebreak $A_0$ = -0.1189(7), we derive the ratio of the axial vector to the vector coupling constant $λ$ = ${\it g_A/g_V}$ = -1.2739(19). When included in the world average for the neutron lifetime $τ$ = 885.7(7)s, this gives the first element of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix $V_{ud} $. With this value and the Particle Data Group values for $V_{us}$ and $V_{ub}$, we find a deviation from the unitarity condition for the first row of the CKM matrix of $Δ$ = 0.0083(28), which is 3.0 times the stated error.