Exotic physics in neutron Laue diffraction
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Date
2014-02-06
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Australian Institute of Physics
Abstract
Neutron Laue diffraction has been reborn thanks largely to the success of X-ray Laue diffraction for protein crystallography at synchrotrons and to the development of efficient large-area image-plate detectors. The Laue technique with thermal neutrons is proving very successful for small-molecule crystallography on crystals frequently no larger than 0.1 mm3, first on VIVALDI at the Institut Laue-Langevin in Grenoble, France, and now on KOALA on the OPAL reactor at ANSTO in Lucas Heights, Australia, and is opening neutron diffraction to fields of structural chemistry previously deemed impossible. The high-resolution volumetric view of reciprocal space is particularly advantageous in the detection of phase changes, incommensurability and twinning, but does come at a price though: all scattering from the sample, inelastic as well as elastic, contributes to the observed Laue patterns. This can however reveal valuable physical information about the sample beyond the crystal structure, but careful analysis is required to extract the details in the two dimensional projection intrinsic to Laue patterns. Examples of exotic physics in neutron Laue diffraction experiments described here include: rods of scattering from two-dimensional magnetic ordering; observation of phonon scattering and determination of sound velocities; observation of quasi-Kossel lines in experiments with diamond-anvil cells; spin polarization of hydrogen nuclei to reduce the incoherent background in crystallographic studies of samples with high hydrogen content.
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Keywords
Baryons, Coherent scattering, Diffraction, Diffraction methods, Elementary particles, Fermions, Hadrons, Neutrons, Nuclei, Nucleons, Phase transformations, Particles, Scattering
Citation
McIntyre, G. J. (2014). Exotic physics in neutron Laue diffraction. Paper presented at the 38th Annual Condensed Matter and Materials Meeting 2014, Waiheke Island Resort, Waiheke, Auckland, New Zealand, 4th February - 7th February, 2014. (pp. 66). Retrieved from: https://physics.org.au/wp-content/uploads/cmm/2014/Wagga2014proceedings.pdf