THE CRUCIAL ROLE OF NEUTRON β-DECAY EXPERIMENTS IN ESTABLISHING THE FUNDAMENTAL SYMMETRIES OF THE (V-A) DESCRIPTION OF WEAK INTERACTIONS
Experimental data from unpolarized and polarized neutron beta -decay yield accurate values for the basic parameters of the P-violating T-conserving charged current weak interaction, thereby posing a potentially stringent unitarity test of the CKM quark mixing matrix. Experimental studies of the radiative (BR ~3.10-3) and two-body (BR ~ 4.10-6) decay branches are currently in progress.