CANISIUS The Austrian Neutron Spin Echo Interferometer

TL;DR

The paper introduces CANISIUS, a versatile neutron spin echo interferometer capable of multiple operational modes, including quantum superposition generation, with applications in fundamental physics and ultra small angle scattering.

Contribution

It presents the design, capabilities, and novel applications of CANISIUS, including a new method for creating and characterizing structured neutron wavefunctions with quantum superpositions.

Findings

Demonstrated the interferometer's versatility in different modes

Showcased the generation of neutron superposition states with specific OAM modes

Applied the instrument to ultra small angle scattering experiments

Abstract

The broad band resonant spin echo interferometer, CANISIUS, is presented. CANISIUS is built in a versatile way, such that it can be operated in both a continuous broad band beam or a pulsed Time of Flight beam. This versatility also extends to the modes available to the instrument, such as Neutron Resonant Spin Echo, Spin Echo (Modulated) Small Angle Neutron Scattering and coherent averaging to produce structured wavefunctions for scattering. The instrument may also be used as an interferometer, to probe fundamental questions in quantum mechanics. In this paper we detail both the continuous and Time of Flight options of the instruments. In addition we demonstrate the applicability of our interferometer to ultra small angle scattering in a white beam. Finally we demonstrate a new spin echo interferometry tool, which uses incomplete recombination of the two path states to generate composite wavefunctions with special structure. In particular we show that this method produces neutron wavefunctions that exist in a superposition of two quantum mechanical OAM modes, l =+1 or -1 We illustrate that just as this method can be used to generate certain structured waves, it may also be used to characterize the structure of the input wavefunction.