Determination of the Weak-Coupling Constants from Free-Neutron Decay Experiments

Both the neutron lifetime and the neutron β-decay asymmetry have recently been measured with high accuracy. A joint evaluation of these measurements gives values for the weak-coupling constants gV and gA. We investigate implications of these measurements for the conserved vector current hypothesis, the unitarity of the weak quark mixing matrix, hyperon decay and SU(3)-symmetry, the existence of right-handed currents, the solar-neutrino problem, and big-bang cosmology.