Measurement of neutrino and proton asymmetry in the decay of polarized neutrons

The Standard Model of Particle Physics is in excellent agreement with all experimental results. However, it is not believed to be the most fundamental theory. It requires, for example, too many free parameters and is not able to explain the existence of effects such as parity-violation or CP-violation. Thus measurements have to be performed to probe the Standard Model and to search for ''new physics''. An ideal laboratory for this is the decay of the free polarized neutron. In this thesis, we present measurements of the neutrino asymmetry B and the proton asymmetry C in neutron decay. These coefficients describe the correlation between neutron spin and momentum of the respective particle, and provide detailed information on the structure of the underlying theory. The experiment was performed using the electron spectrometer PERKEO II installed at the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL). It was equipped with a combined electron-proton detector to reconstruct the neutrino in a coincidence measurement. The uncertainty of our neutrino asymmetry result, B=0.9802(50), is comparable to the present best measurement, and, for the first time ever, we obtained a precise value for the proton asymmetry, C=-0.2377(36). Both results are used to analyze neutron decay for hints on ''Physics beyond the Standard Model'' by studying possible admixtures of right-handed currents and of scalar and tensor couplings to the interaction. (orig.)