An ultracold neutron facility at PSI

Fundamental particle physics experiments with ultracold neutrons (UCN) as well as potential applications require as many ultracold neutrons as one can possibly get. The two UCN flagship experiments, the search for an electric dipole moment (EDM) of the neutron and the precise measurement of the neutron decay life time, by far outperformed the non-UCN versions of these experiments. However, they suffer from too low UCN intensities, both for increasing their statistical accuracy as well as for further investigating their systematic limitations. Recent developments opened up the possibility to build new sources for UCN with orders of magnitude gains in UCN density over currently operated reactor sources. We report on the status of the UCN project at PSI which aims at setting up a facility providing UCN densities in excess of 2000 cm(-3) in a large storage volume of about 2 m(3). As a first experiment at the new facility we intend to search for the neutron EDM with a sensitivity of 5 x 10(-28) e cm.