The reflection of very cold neutrons from diamond powder nanoparticles

TL;DR

This study investigates the potential of diamond nanoparticle powders to efficiently reflect very cold neutrons, demonstrating intense scattering suitable for neutron reflection applications within the VCN energy range.

Contribution

It provides experimental evidence that diamond nanoparticle powders can serve as highly effective neutron reflectors for very cold neutrons, supported by measurements and a qualitative scattering model.

Findings

Intense VCN scattering observed from thin diamond nanoparticle powders

Scattering behavior aligns with a model of independent nanoparticles at rest

Potential for efficient neutron reflection up to 10^{-4} eV energy range

Abstract

We study possibility of efficient reflection of very cold neutrons (VCN) from powders of nanoparticles. In particular, we measured the scattering of VCN at a powder of diamond nanoparticles as a function of powder sample thickness, neutron velocity and scattering angle. We observed extremely intense scattering of VCN even off thin powder samples. This agrees qualitatively with the model of independent nanoparticles at rest. We show that this intense scattering would allow us to use nanoparticle powders very efficiently as the very first reflectors for neutrons with energies within a complete VCN range up to $10^{-4}$ eV.