%0 Journal Article
%T Direct Measurements of the Lifetime of Heavy Hypernuclei
%A X. Qiu
%A L. Tang
%A A. Margaryan
%A P. Achenbach
%A A. Ahmidouch
%A I. Albayrak
%A D. Androic
%A A. Asaturyan
%A R. Asaturyan
%A O. Ates
%A R. Badui
%A P. Baturin
%A W. Boeglin
%A J. Bono
%A E. Brash
%A P. Carter
%A C. Chen
%A X. Chen
%A A. Chiba
%A E. Christy
%A M. M. Dalton
%A S. Danagoulian
%A R. De Leo
%A D. Doi
%A M. Elaasar
%A R. Ent
%A H. Fenker
%A Y. Fujii
%A M. Furic
%A M. Gabrielyan
%A L. Gan
%A F. Garibaldi
%A D. Gaskell
%A A. Gasparian
%A T. Gogami
%A O. Hashimoto
%A T. Horn
%A B. Hu
%A E. V. Hungerford
%A M. Jones
%A H. Kanda
%A M. Kaneta
%A M. Kawai
%A D. Kawama
%A H. Khanal
%A M. Kohl
%A A. Liyanage
%A W. Luo
%A K. Maeda
%A P. Markowitz
%A T. Maruta
%A A. Matsumura
%A V. Maxwell
%A A. Mkrtchyan
%A H. Mkrtchyan
%A S. Nagao
%A S. N. Nakamura
%A A. Narayan
%A C. Neville
%A G. Niculescu
%A M. I. Niculescu
%A A. Nunez
%A Nuruzzaman
%A Y. Okayasu
%A T. Petkovic
%A J. Pochodzalla
%A J. Reinhold
%A V. M. Rodriguez
%A C. Samanta
%A B. Sawatzky
%A T. Seva
%A A. Shichijo
%A V. Tadevosyan
%A N. Taniya
%A K. Tsukada
%A M. Veilleux
%A W. Vulcan
%A F. R. Wesselmann
%A S. A. Wood
%A L. Ya
%A T. Yamamoto
%A Z. Ye
%A K. Yokota
%A L. Yuan
%A S. Zhamkochyan
%A L. Zhu
%J Physics
%D 2012
%I arXiv
%X The lifetime of a Lambda particle embedded in a nucleus (hypernucleus) decreases from that of free Lambda decay due to the opening of the Lambda N to NN weak decay channel. However, it is generally believed that the lifetime of a hypernucleus attains a constant value (saturation) for medium to heavy hypernuclear masses, yet this hypothesis has been difficult to verify. The present paper reports a direct measurement of the lifetime of medium-heavy hypernuclei produced with a photon-beam from Fe, Cu, Ag, and Bi targets. The recoiling hypernuclei were detected by a fission fragment detector using low-pressure multi-wire proportional chambers. The experiment agrees remarkably well with the only previously-measured single-species heavy-hypernucleus lifetime, that of Fe56_Lambda at KEK, and has significantly higher precision. The experiment disagrees with the measured lifetime of an unknown combination of heavy hypernuclei with 180<A<225 and, with a small statistical and systematic uncertainty, strongly favors the expected saturation of the lifetime decrease.
%U http://arxiv.org/abs/1212.1133v3