On coherence and the transverse spatial extent of a neutron wave packet
C. F. Majkrzak (1), N. F. Berk (1), B. B. Maranville (1), J. A. Dura, (1), T. Jach (2) ((1) Center for Neutron Research, (2) Material, Measurement Laboratory, National Institute of Standards, Technology,, Gaithersburg, MD, USA)

TL;DR
This paper investigates the coherence properties and transverse spatial extent of neutron wave packets, highlighting their impact on neutron scattering experiments and demonstrating how different coherence measures can be experimentally distinguished.
Contribution
It introduces two distinct measures of neutron beam coherence and clarifies their roles in scattering, emphasizing the importance of transverse spatial extent in coherent processes.
Findings
Two measures of coherence are identified and distinguished.
Transverse spatial extent determines the area for coherent scattering.
Experimental methods can differentiate the two coherence measures.
Abstract
In the analysis of neutron scattering measurements of condensed matter structure, it normally suffices to treat the incident and scattered neutron beams as if composed of incoherent distributions of plane waves with wavevectors of different magnitudes and directions which are taken to define an instrumental resolution. However, despite the wide-ranging applicability of this conventional treatment, there are cases in which the wave function of an individual neutron in the beam must be described more accurately by a spatially localized packet, in particular with respect to its transverse extent normal to its mean direction of propagation. One such case involves the creation of orbital angular momentum (OAM) states in a neutron via interaction with a material device of a given size. It is shown in the work reported here that there exist two distinct measures of coherence of special…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
Taxonomy
TopicsQuantum, superfluid, helium dynamics · Astro and Planetary Science · Nuclear Physics and Applications
