Diffraction of very cold neutrons at phase gratings

✍ Scribed by Kurt Eder; Manfred Gruber; Anton Zeilinger; Roland Gähler; Walter Mampe

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1991
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 762 KB
• Volume: 172
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0921-4526
• DOI: 10.1016/0921-4526(91)90451-j

✦ Synopsis

We report extensive experiments on the diffraction of very cold neutrons (A = 100 A) at large-area transmission phase gratings with grating constants d = 2km and d = 1 pm. respectively. The experimental results are compared with Fresnel-Kirchhoff calculations showing agreement in great detail. Using phase gratings it is possible to shift intensities between different diffraction orders, thus making them very useful for other neutron-optics experiments at low energies. Also, the excellent manufacturing precision of our transmission phase gratings meets the requirements for such experiments like very-cold-neutron interferometry.