Testing of the St. Benedict Gas Catcher and Extraction System

Nuclear beta decays provide a unique avenue for testing the electroweak part of the Standard Model through precision measurements. Physics beyond the Standard Model would manifest itself in these transitions through a variety of possible effects including a non-unitarity of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa quark mixing matrix. This effect can be probed for via measurements of the beta-neutrino angular correlation parameter in superallowed mixed decays. In order to study the isotopes of interest, a continuous beam of reaction products must be stopped, bunched, and transported with energies on the keV scale to an ion trap where a detector system can observe the beta decays. To that end, the Superallowed Transition Beta-Neutrino Decay Ion Coincidence Trap (St. Benedict) is currently under construction at the University of Notre Dame Nuclear Science Laboratory. The testing results of the St. Benedict gas-catcher cell, and commissioning of its ion extraction system, with a near 100% transport efficiency for the radio-frequency carpet within a pressure range of 0.75-5 mbar, will be presented.