Current Status of the Experiment on Direct Measurement of Neutron-Neutron Scattering Length at the Reactor YAGUAR

A new experiment was proposed in 2002 to perform the first direct measurement of neutron-neutron scattering on the powerful pulsed reactor YAGUAR located at Snezhinsk, Ural region, Russia. Extensive efforts were made to model the background conditions and to optimize the set-up design. To make the experiment feasible it was necessary to suppress the background from various origins by more than 16 orders of magnitude for thermal neutrons and 14 orders of magnitude for fast neutrons. In 2003 a channel was drilled under the reactor and equipped for time-of-flight measurements. During the next two years at this channel there were carried out a series of test experiments aimed at verifying the accuracy of the background modeling. Good agreement of the measured results with the calculated values enabled us to make the final design of the full scale set-up. During 2005-2006 the experimental system was manufactured. After vacuum tests at JINR the set-up was mounted at the YAGUAR reactor hall. In 2006-2007 calibration measurements with noble gases were performed. The results confirmed the validity of the modeling of the full scale experiment and verified the calibration. The first preliminary experiments for nn-scattering were performed in April 2008. These recent results are discussed.