Abstract
Methods to prepare and characterize neutron helical waves carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM) were recently demonstrated at small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) facilities. These methods enable access to the neutron orbital degree of freedom which provides new avenues of exploration in fundamental science experiments as well as in material characterization applications. However, it remains a challenge to recover phase profiles from SANS measurements. We introduce and demonstrate a novel neutron interferometry technique for extracting phase information that is typically lost in SANS measurements. An array of reference beams, with complementary structured phase profiles, are put into a coherent superposition with the array of object beams, thereby manifesting the phase information in the far-field intensity profile. We demonstrate this by resolving petal-structure signatures of helical wave interference for the first time: an implementation of the long-sought recovery of phase information from small-angle scattering measurements.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 10785 |
| Journal | Nature Communications |
| Volume | 15 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 2024 |
Funding
This work was supported by the Canadian Excellence Research Chairs (CERC) program, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the Canada First Research Excellence Fund (CFREF), and the US Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Physics, under Interagency Agreement 89243019SSC000025 (M.G.H.). This work was also supported by the DOE Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, in the program \u201CQuantum Horizons: QIS Research and Innovation for Nuclear Science\u201D through grant DE-SC0023695 (D.A.P. and O.L.). A portion of this research used resources at the High Flux Isotope Reactor, a DOE Office of Science User Facility operated by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The beam time was allocated to GP-SANS (CG2) on proposal number IPTS-30325.\u00A0This work is based partly on experiments performed at the Swiss spallation neutron source SINQ, Paul Scherrer Institute, Villigen, Switzerland. Certain trade names and company products are mentioned in the text or identified in an illustration in order to adequately specify the experimental procedure and equipment used. In no case does such identification imply recommendation or endorsement by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, nor does it imply that the products are necessarily the best available for the purpose.