Development and perfomance of a miniaturised spin rotator suitable for neutron interferometer experiments

In our latest neutron polarimetric experiment ¹  a miniaturised versatile rotating field generator is designed for an neutron interferometer experiment aiming to test spin-rotation coupling (see here for theory). The coil design without material in the beam path, which is a necessary condition for applying the device in neutron interferometric experiments. The rotating field generator’s magnetic field is simulated, showing a sufficient field homogeneityan, according coil mount as well as a water cooler are fabricated and the device was successfully tested in a polarimeter experiment. By re-performing the experiment of Demirel et al (New J. Phys., 17:023065, 2015) regarding spin-rotation coupling the performance of the fabricated miniaturised coil was quantified (see here for experimental details). The presented miniaturised rotating field generator (see picture below green) is suited for the proposed experiment by Mashhoon et al [4] investigating spin-rotation coupling in neutron interferometry, which shall be done in near future at our instrument S18, at the high-flux (60 MW) reactor of the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) in Grenoble, France.

The magnetic properties of the coil could also be used for other neutron interferometer experiments. In addition, the coil geometry can be modified for any other application sensitive to material with similarly strong conditions on the magnetic field and the diameters.

1. Armin Danner, Bülent Demirel, Stephan Sponar and Yuji Hasegawa, J. Phys. Commun. 3,035001 (2019). ↩