Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 August 2009
Among a variety of neutron scattering techniques, those utilizing polarized neutrons have shown rapid development over the last one to two decades. One of the most significant features of using polarized neutrons is the ability to separate magnetic cross sections from nuclear scattering processes. Thus, there exist many important experiments which can be performed only by such techniques. The use of a triple-axis spectrometer with polarization capabilities, which will be our main focus here, makes up a small, but important subset of polarized neutron experiments.
In Chap. 2 we discussed the magnetic scattering cross section for unpolarized neutrons. Here we start with a description of the additional information that can be gained with polarized neutrons. Of course, to take advantage of polarization analysis, one must have techniques for polarizing and manipulating polarized neutron beams, and we give a brief description of these. Turning to applications, we give a few examples of magnetic form-factor measurements in paramagnetic or ferromagnetic systems, which use techniques pioneered by Shull and his collaborators in the 1950s (Shull, Strauser, and Wollan, 1951). Finally, we discuss polarization analysis on a triple-axis spectrometer as developed by Moon, Riste, and Koehler (1969). The latter approach is quite powerful, as it allows one to uniquely isolate both the elastic and inelastic neutron cross sections; however, due to intensity limitations, polarization analysis was not fully utilized until the 1980s. A more extensive review of polarized neutron techniques, including neutron spin-echo spectroscopy, is given in the book Polarized Neutrons by Williams (1988).
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.