  The article provides a theoretical substantiation for a significant increase
in the level of accuracy in determining the neutron lifetime using an
alternative concept of neutron beta decay. Neutrons are distributed among
different subsets depending on the sign of the scalar product of the neutron
spin vector and momentum of the emitted electron during decay. Therefore, the
neutron lifetime can be determined separately for each of the subsets as the
inverse frequency of its decay, which is to be averaged over the number of
neutrons in this subset. The total neutron lifetime on the total set of
neutrons is calculated by averaging the partial (basic) lifetimes, considering
their weights. The weights of the basic lifetimes are calculated for two
weighing methods, leading, respectively, to the so-called lifetime of
"nonpolarized" neutrons, the weighted average lifetime of neutrons and the
central lifetime, i.e. the arithmetic mean for the basic lifetimes of neutrons.
The dependence between different average neutron lifetimes through the integral
asymmetry parameter calculated by using known experimental data leads to simple
analytical expressions. The numerical estimate of the weighted average neutron
lifetime gives a value that is in good agreement with the results of well-known
experiments, which proves the validity of the proposed concept of neutron beta
decay. This article includes necessary conditions for a new experiment to bring
the neutron lifetime determination to a new level of accuracy.
