Magnetic Neutron Scattering in Solid Oxygen and its Applications to Ultracold Neutron Production

TL;DR

This paper uses neutron scattering to analyze the structure and excitations of solid oxygen, providing insights into ultracold neutron production relevant for experimental physics.

Contribution

It presents a detailed characterization of solid oxygen's structure functions and excitation modes, linking them to ultracold neutron production rates.

Findings

Determined the static and dynamic structure functions of solid oxygen.

Identified energy excitation modes related to spin interactions.

Calculated temperature-dependent ultracold neutron production rates.

Abstract

Using neutron scattering, we investigate the static and dynamic structure functions $S(Q,\omega)$ of 3 distinct solid phases (using powder average techniques), and characterize the corresponding modes of energy excitation, focusing primarily on the dynamics of spin interaction. With the $S(Q,\omega)$ maps, we extract the temperature dependent production rate and upscattering cross section, that are relevant for understanding experimental data on ultracold neutron production in solid oxygen at the saturated vapor pressure.