TRIUMF‘s ultra cold neutron facility TUCAN

TRIUMF is Canada’s particle accelerator centre. The research topics pursued by particle physicists at TRIUMF are i) the high energy frontier ii) neutrinos and dark matter iii) fundamental symmetries and interactions. This presentation shall give a brief overview of the particle physics experiments TRIUMF is involved in, followed by details about the TUCAN (TRIUMF Ultra Cold Advanced Neutron) project. The main objective of the TUCAN collaboration is to search for the neutron electric dipole moment (nEDM) at a sensitivity level of 10^-27 ecm. Finding or improving the upper limit of the nEDM will advance our understanding of the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the Universe, since this asymmetry and the nEDM are closely related via fundamental symmetries. Ultracold neutrons (UCN) are the tool of choice for this important search because their low kinetic energies allow for long observation times and improved control of systematics during the experiment. TRIUMF‘s UCN source will be presented, including results from the commissioning efforts. We currently operate a prototype UCN source, and are in parallel developing a next generation UCN source capable of achieving the necessary densities for a competitive nEDM search as well as working towards the design of the TUCAN EDM spectrometer. I will wrap up the presentation with an outlook on the TUCAN project status and progress.