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Neutron resonance spin echo, bootstrap method for increasing the effective magnetic field
R. Gähler, R. Golub
To cite this version:
R. Gähler, R. Golub. Neutron resonance spin echo, bootstrap method for increasing the effective magnetic field. Journal de Physique, 1988, 49 (7), pp.1195-1202. �10.1051/jphys:019880049070119500�.
�jpa-00210801�
Neutron resonance spin echo, bootstrap method for increasing the
effective magnetic field
R. Gähler (1) and R. Golub (2)
(1) Fakultät für Physik, E 21, Technische Universität München, 8046 Garching, F.R.G.
(2) Technische Universität Berlin, F. R. G.
(Requ le 15 d6cembre 1987, révisé et accepté le ler
mars1988)
Résumé.
2014Nous montrons qu’il est possible d’utiliser la technique du bootstrap pour accroître l’angle de précession et ainsi la résolution de l’instrument pour
unchamp magnétique maximum donné
enspectrométrie
d’echos de spins de neutrons. Les limites théoriques et techniques à l’amplification du champ effectif sont
discutées.
Abstract.
2014We show that it is possible to
use abootstrap technique to increase the precession angle, and
hence the instrument resolution for
agiven maximum magnetic field intensity in Neutron Resonance Spin
Echo (NRSE) spectrometry. The limits, theoretical
aswell
astechnical, to this effective field amplification
arediscussed.
Classification
Physics Abstracts
29.30
Introduction.
Neutron spin echo spectrometry, first introduced by
Mezei in 1972 [1] has been developed into an extremely productive and sophisticated technique
for high resolution neutron spectroscopy [2-7].
In previous work we have shown that the introduc- tion of magnetic resonance spin flippers can lead to
the elimination of the requirement for large magnetic
fields over large distances in quasi-elastic [8] and
inelastic [9] neutron spin-echo spectrometers. In the
latter work we showed that one can obtain a factor of 2 increase in the precession angle of the neutron spins for a given magnetic field and that this
translates into a factor of 2 improvement in the
relation between instrument resolution and maxi-
mum available field in comparison with neutron spin
echo (NSE). We also briefly mentioned the possibili-
ty of further increases in this factor so that the factor of 2 can in principle be increased to 2 N. In the present work we give a detailed description of this bootstrap method for increasing the instrumental
performance and discuss the theoretical and techni- cal limits to the size of N.
The basic principle of an NSE spectrometer can be understood in terms of the following simplified
argument [1]. Neutrons polarized perpendicular to a
constant magnetic field BNSE undergo a precession through an angle
on travelling a distance L through the field BNSE with velocity v l. y is the neutron gyromagnetic ratio (y
=2 03BC /h, 03BC
=neutron magnetic moment). After scattering (neutron velocity changed to V2) the
neutrons travel through a similar region with rever-
sed magnetic field and undergo a precession through
an angle - p2’ The net precession angle is thus :
where m is the neutron mass, líwn is the neutron
energy transfer and TNSE is called the spin-echo time.
cp is measured by means of a static spin flipper,
followed by a polarization analyser and a neutron
detector. The detector signal is given by
Article published online by EDP Sciences and available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/jphys:019880049070119500
1196
For an energy transfer spectrum S the signal
will be
containing the Fourier transform of the energy transfer spectrum S(w,,), i. e. the time correlation function of the fluctuations in the scattering system.
We see from (4) that larger values of available TNSE imply sensitivity to smaller values of Cù n (hence higher effective energy resolution) and that the
maximum available TNSE is determined by the maxi-
mum field and the proportionality constant between precession angle and field strength (Eq. (2)).
Amplification of precession angle by the bootstrap.
1. OPERATION OF 1TCOILS.
-We consider a neutron beam initially polarized along the x axis, travelling in
the y direction through a series of
7rcoils whose D-C
magnetic fields (magnitude Bo) are either parallel or anti-parallel to the z axis. (Note the change of
coordinate system compared to reference [9]. Each
7r
coil contains an oscillating magnetic field Bf, pointing along a direction in the x-y plane (see Fig. 1). As is well known [10] the oscillating field can
be regarded as a superposition of 2 counter-rotating fields, each with a magnitude Bf
=Bf /2, one of
which (depending on the direction of Bo) will be in
resonance with the neutron precession if the fre- quency of the oscillating field, too, satisfies
The other counter-rotating component has only a negligible effect on the behaviour of the neutron
spin. The operation of the
7Tcoils was explained in
reference [9]. It was shown that if a neutron enters a
wcoil at time to with its spin making an angle
cp (to ) with the x axis it will leave the
wcoil, whose length is taken as f, at a times
=l / v later with its
spin making an angle cp’ with the x axis :
where
is the angle between the rotating field and the x axis at the time that the neutron enters the
03C0coil. We
assume that the entry and exit from the
03C0coils is
rapid enough that boundary effects play no role.
2. SIMPLE MODEL OF THE BOOTSTRAP. - In order to illustrate the physical principles involved we will
first discuss a simplified model of the system in which we neglect the term in t, in equation (6). In figure 2 we show the position of the neutron spin,
~°, at the time, to, of entry into a
wcoil whose D-C field is in the positive direction (i.e. that direction
which involves a counter-clockwise precession in Fig. 2).
In the
7Tcoil the neutron spin precesses through
an angle
03C0about Bl+ ) so that it returns to the x-y
plane at a position cp 1 whose angle with the x-axis is given by (6). If the neutron now leaves the first
7T
coil and enters a second with reversed Bo, so that
the effective rotating component Bf(-) rotates
clockwise, the rotating component Bf(- ) will now be
at an angle - cp f (t° ) and the precession through
7T
about this component will result in the neutron
spin reaching an angle
with the x axis (a
=cP f(tO) - cp °). Passage through a
Fig. 1.
-Operation of
7rcoils : (a) decomposition of
anoscillating field into two counter-rotating fields ; (b)
aneutron
spin making
anangle cp with respect to the x axis
onentering the coil, leaves the coil at
anangle cp’.
Fig. 2.
-Simple model of the bootstrap : (a) overall view of
abootstrap coil system ; (b) coil C,
-A neutron spin, initially at
anangle ’P 0 with respect to the
xaxis makes
anangle cp
1when leaving the
03C0coil; (c) Coil C2
-the angle between the spin and x axis is transformed from (Pl
-cp2 ; (d) (e) Coils C3, C4
-Each coil further increases the angle between the spin and the x axis.
further
7rcoil (with positive Bo) will result in a
further precession about Bf(+ ) and an angle with the
x axis of
By passing through further
ircoils this bootstrap
action will continue so that after N-03C0 coils we will have
Taking into account (7) and (5) we see that equation (10) represents a gain of a factor 2 N with respect to equation (1) and this will translate directly
into an improved instrument performance according
to equations (2) and (3).
In NSE the resolution is sensitive to the precision
of the line integral of the magnetic field between the
flippers. This integral must be constant (in time and space) for all neutron trajectories within a precision
better than the required relative energy resolution.
In NRSE (with or without bootstrap) the require-
ment of precision is transfered to the rf-frequencies (easy to maintain) and to the distance between the
rf-flipper coils, whose variations for all trajectories
must be constant within the relative resolution.
3. DETAILED ANALYSIS OF THE BOOTSTRAP. - We consider a series of
7Tcoils : A1, A2
...An ... AN
each with its Bo field reversed relative to the
preceding one. Applying equation (6) we find that
after leaving the nth
7Tcoil the neutron phase will
make an angle cp n with the x axis :
where tA is the time of entry into the first it-coil.
By forming the sum
using (11) and cancelling terms on both sides we
obtain the solution to the recursion relation (11) :
which is equation (19) of reference [9] if we take cp ° = 0. The factor 2 N in the first term of
equation (13) represents the gain factor due to the
bootstrap.
It is amusing to note that the same bootstrap technique of increasing an initial angle by alternate precessions around two different axes has been applied to the problem of searching for neutron-
antineutron (n - n ) oscillations [11] although we only noticed this analogy after the fact. In the
n - n work a recursion relation similar to
equation (11) was solved by the same technique as
used above.
4. NRSE SYSTEM WITH BOOTSTRAP. - In order to
use the bootstrap in an NRSE spectrometer we will need 4 sets of coils (each set consisting of N single
7r
coils) ; which will be designated A, B, C, D.
tA, 8.., will represent the times that a neutron enters each set of coils. Set A will have frequency
w 1, set B, w 1= ± w 1, as required, while C and D will have w 2 and Cù2 = ± W 2 (see Fig. 3). As in
NRSE without bootstrap we can assume the drift
regions between the coil sets to be field-free. Any
1198
Fig. 3.
-Outline of
aspectrometer showing the sets of bootstrap coils A, B, C, D. Li, L2
arethe drift regions.
guide fields used will have only a trivial effect on the operation of the instrument. At the entry to coil-set A the neutrons will be polarized along the x direction
so we apply equation (13) with cp °
=0 and obtain
Now for set B, cp NA represents the initial phase so applying (13) and using (14) we find :
and choosing w 1
=(- l)N + 1 . úJ l’ the N Z terms
cancel and
Similarly for C and D taking w2
=(- l)N + 1 . w 2 we find
Hence by choosing úJ l’ úJ 2 to have opposite signs we
have
with T2
=tD - tc and T,
=tB - tA and the magni-
tudes of w l, 2 can be chosen to give the spin-echo focussing condition for either quasi-elastic or inelas-
tic scattering [4]. In the above discussion all angles
are measured with respect to the x-axis (fixed in the
lab. frame) and the spin returns to the x-y plane at
the exit of each coil (perfect
7rcoils). After travelling through a polarization analyser directed along the x-
axis the rate of neutrons reaching the detector will
be given by (3) with cp replaced by cp ND of
equation (18). We thus see that it is possible to
obtain a 2 N times improvement in the relationship
between maximum field strength and instrument resolution. This can be used to design an apparatus for higher resolution, or to work with lower field
strengths, or some combination according to the particular application.
Limits to the bootstrap gain factor.
The question immediately arises as to the limits of
this process. How large can N in equation (18) be ?
The obvious practical limit is that each unit increase of N requires the neutrons to pass through an
additional 4 coils and there is a limit to the amount of material the neutrons can traverse. But in addition to this technical limit, which we discuss below, a physical limit to N is set by the width of the acceptable velocity spectrum. The above discussion has assumed that the precession about B in each
w
coil is precisely
7Tradians. The angle of precession
about B is given by
and Bf and f are chosen so that 03BE =
7rfor some velocity vo. Then
and the above discussion must be modified to take into account the deviation of 03BE (v ) from the ideal value of
03C0radians. It is easy to see that the correction will be of second order in x = § (v ) -
7Tand that the error will increase with N.
1. PHYSICAL LIMIT TO N.
-In order to study this
question in more detail we have carried out an
analysis of the system starting with the Schroedinger equation :
where the Hamiltonian, H, represents the interaction of a neutron with a static magnetic field, Bo, along
the z axis, and a rotating magnetic field Bf (fib
=03BCBf), rotating with f requency w in the x, y
plane.
a(0 ) is the probability amplitude for the spin
up (down) state.
For neutrons entering the coil at time t1 and exiting at a time t1 +
Tthe solution of equation (21)
can be written [10]
Now for a system of coils with tA the time of entry of
the first coil we take ’A (tA) as 1/B/2 1 for initial
polarization in the x direction and 1 for initial
polarization in the z direction and multiply by a
matrix [C (ti )] for each coil. Then with the resulting
wave function we calculate .p lux I .p > or qi I cr, I 03C8 ) as the case may be.
We see that each spin component of the final wave function with initial x polarization will consist of 4 terms in the case of 2 coils, 8 terms for 3 coils and 16
terms for 4 coils. The number of terms in each spin component of the final wave function for the case of M coils will be 2m and the order of each term in sin 6r and/or cos b T will be M. Thus the output
polarization will be of order 2 M in sin b 7 /cos b 7,
and the number of terms in the output polarization
will be 22 M, an uncomfortably large number for M>_4.
However, most of these terms will be oscillating
functions of tA, the time of arrival of a particular
neutron at the first coil and hence will not make any contribution to the time average of the output
polarization or detector counting rate. In addition
we are interested in the case where (tB - tA ), the
time of flight between coils, is much larger than T,
the transit time of a single coil so that all terms containing oscillating functions of (tB - tA ) or (tD - tc ) or the sum of these two quantities will be rapidly varying functions of neutron velocity and will
go to zero when averaged over the incoming velocity
distribution. Therefore we need only keep terms
depending on the difference between (tB - tA ) and (tD - tc) and on
T.To begin with we have calculated the case of two
w-coils, the neutrons entering the first coil at time tA, and the second coil B at a time tA + ? + T.
The result for u x) at the output of coil B is
after averaging out the terms depending on tA. We
see the leading term is of order 2 M in sin b T as
expected. The x-polarization at the exit of B is seen to be a measure of the travel time between A and B with the factor of 2 gain as discussed above for
N = 1.
We now consider the case of four it-coils all with the same applied frequency. The neutrons enter coil
A at time tA (polarized along the x direction), coil B
at time tB
=tA + T + Tl, coil C (which has its D-C magnetic field reversed, i.e. WC = - W A) at time
te = tB +
T+ ts and coil D (also with reversed
magnetic field) at a time tD = tC +
T+ T2 (see Fig. 3).
The polarization in the x direction (averaged over
tA and discarding terms as discussed above) is found
to be :
From the definition of b (following Eq. (21)) we see
that the Larmor frequency around the rotating field
is given by WL (rot)
=2 b so that for one
7Tcoil :
and
where 8 v = v - v o is less than the half-width of the
incoming velocity spectrum.
Thus for 6v /v = 10-1 as is necessary for the linear relation between spin-echo phase and neutron en-
ergy change to be valid (Eq. (2) and Refs. [1, 2]),
the higher order terms in (23) and (24) are com- pletely negligible, and the only important contri-
bution comes from the leading term, which contains the factor of 2 gain expected from equation (18)
-the major reduction with respect to the ideal case of equation (18) being the factor sing bT which is on the order of
In figure 4 we plot the result for the 4
7Tsystem
(Eq. (24)
-note that only the first term is signifi-
1200
Fig. 4.
-Transform functions for
aspin-echo spec- trometer. The horizontal scale is chosen for the 4 w system with TNSE(AO) defined
asfor the classical NSE with the
same
magnetic field value
asin the
7Tcoils. The period of
the fast oscillations is (;ù n . T NSE (À 0)
= 7T.cant) as a function of the neutron energy transfer variable (On, averaged over an incoming wavelength
distribution which was assumed constant between
A o - 8 A and A o + 6A for
E =6A/Ao
=3 % and
6 % taking into account the À 3 dependence of
TNSE (Eq. (2)). The separation between neighbour- ing maxima and minima is given by (see Eqs. (24)
and (2))
with
defined as in the classical spin echo for a magnetic
field equal to that in the
03C0coils.
In a quasi-elastic scattering experiment (for example) the functions shown in figure 4 are the true
transform functions (for Q independent scattering),
which replace the cos (On - T NSE function in equation (4), when calculating the ouput for a given S(Wn)-
As is usual in spin echo the resolution does not
depend on
Ebut only on the maximum value of
TNSE (actually 2 . TNSE in our present 4
7Tcase).
However we see that the use of larger values of
E
results in a reduction of the range of Cl) n which is included in the Fourier transform of S ( w n ) measured by the instrument. This is not a problem since it is
usually not necessary to measure a broad frequency
distribution with a high resolution [12]. We see that
the virtue of the spin-echo method is to obtain the
desired high resolution with a relatively large
e
(and hence a high intensity) while only paying the price of a reduction in dynamic range which is
unimportant when one is measuring narrow peaks.
While the rapid increase of the number of terms in with the number of coils M makes further calcu- lation exceedingly difficult we see that this is un-
necessary, based on the preceding discussion we can
conclude that the leading term of (o,.,) will go as
with
For reasonable narrow velocity distributions as
above we have
which witch 17 = 0.1 would allow values of N -- 5.
We will see below that the practical limits are more stringent than this.
Equation (30) can also be derived from a simple
estimate (see Fig. 5) : for the mean neutron velocity
vo, the rotation angle {3 around B f is exactly
7Twithin
one single coil. For a velocity distribution vo - Ov, the travel times through the coil will vary, and we get :
Fig. 5.
-Motion of
aneutron spin in the rotating frame.
Neutrons with velocity vo precess through
anangle 7T about Brf. Neutrons with other velocities precess through
anangle f3 (Eq. (31)). The angle y determines the loss of
polarization when f3 #
03C0 .Now the vector of polarization will be spread around
z
=0. For each neutron magnetic moment, the angular deviation y from the x-y plane will be proportional to a, which is the angle between the neutron polarization and the field B f at the entrance
of each coil. There will be no deviation for
a =
0, the maximum value will be for
a =90° and the mean value we obtain for a
=45°. Thus the rms
value ( y ) becomes :
For M single coils (with random distribution of a at each coil), the spreads in y will add quadratically and
the final polarization P M will be :
with q taken from equation (25). For small Av Ivo we
obtain :
which is just the leading term in the above calculation
(Eq. (30)).
For completeness we would like to present the results for an earlier system which we have not discussed in print [13]. In this system we take the polarizer and analyser in the z direction, coils A(D)
are v/2 coils resonating at a frequency 2 w (- 2 w )
while coils B(C) are
03C0coils resonating at w (- w ).
The neutrons enter coil A at time tA, coil B at tB
=tA + T + Tl, coil C at tc
=tB + T + ts and coil D at tc + T + T2. All coils are taken to have the
same length, and the amplitudes of the rotating
fields are adjusted so that
The probability Pz for the polarization in
zdirection
at the output is then
considering the narrowness of the velocity distri-
bution as discussed above (following Eq. (24)).
The factor 2 multiplying (ù (Tz - T1) does not
represent any gain in performance as the maximum field (in coils A + D) corresponds to 2
w.2. TECHNICAL LIMITS TO N.
-In order to go from a field-free region into the
wcoils (or vice-versa) the
neutrons must penetrate the conductors carrying the
current which produce the magnetic field. If we take
n turns/cm of conductor with thickness t [cm] the height of the conductors is a =1 /n (neglecting the
space taken by insulator) and the magnetic field is
where I is the current in amperes. The resistance per
cm2 of the coil is
where p is the resistivity of the conductor. The power dissipated is
using (38) and (39), and taking Bo
=300 Gauss (vL = 1 MHz) and p
=2.6 x 10-7 [O.cm] for com- mercially available high-purity aluminium at 80 °K (ten times smaller than the room temperature value).
Of all the good (normal) conductors Al has the best neutron transmission, the mean free path being greater than 11 [cm] for neutron wavelengths A:
4.5 A A 11 A and A : 1.8 Å and reaching a
maximum of 22 cm for A = 4.8 A.
With a 400 cm2 winding area we obtain
and taking t
=0.2 cm yields 35 W/coil. With M = 12
(gain of 6) the total material traversed would be 2 M . t
=4.8 cm or a transmission better than 65 %
over the above mentioned wavelength region. Work- ing in the vicinity of A
=5 A would allow double the amount of material, but small angle scattering might
set a more stringent limit.
These considerations are only meant to be indica-
tive of the possibilities using a relatively simple technology. The future availability of high Tc super- conductors or the use, as is already planned by
several groups [14], of classical superconductors can,
of course, result in an improved instrument.
Conclusions.
We have seen that in addition to allowing the
operation of a Neutron Spin Echo spectrometer
without the need for large magnetic fields over large
distances, an NRSE spectrometer with bootstrap can
provide significant increases in the resolution avail-
able with a given maximum magnetic field. This
improvement can be shared between higher resol-
1202
ution and lower magnetic fields. In addition the combination of the bootstrap idea with the
generalized NRSE system (Sect. 3 of Ref. [9]) will
allow the increased resolution together with arbitrary
field on the sample and the reduction of the sensitivi- ty to sample size.
It may also be possible to use the bootstrap principle to produce a spectrometer for rather high
energy neutrons (100-200 meV) where relative resol- utions of 10-3-10-4 may be of interest [15,16].
While somewhat pedestrian when seen from the viewpoint of present day spin-echo techniques such a
resolution would represent a significant improve-
ment over what is currently possible at these higher energies.
Another interest of the bootstrap technique lies in
the possibility of extending spectroscopy with meV
neutrons to relative resolutions approaching 10- 5.
To realize such a spectrometer would require that
the neutron flight paths between the flipper systems be stable and constant for all neutrons to within
10- 5 of their length or about 10 03BCm in the case of flight paths in the range of several meters. Position-
ing and adjustment to such accuracy is possible using
well established optical bench technology. Whether
the flipper coils necessary for the bootstrap can be produced to this accuracy remains to be seen but it is
possible to visualize using evaporation of aluminium
structures on silicon and similar micron engineering techniques.
Acknowledgments.
Work of this kind would not be possible without the encouragement and support as well as the incisive criticisms of many of one’s colleagues. We would particularly like to thank Profs. D. Dubbers, F.
Mezei, W. Glaser and 0. Scharpf. We are grateful
to B. Farrago, C. Lartigue, B. Sarkissian and C.
Zeyen for helping us find our way through some of
the intricacies of spin echo. C. Skorski, as always, performed miracles with her typing.
References
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[2] Ed. MEZEI, F., Neutron Spin Echo, Lectures notes in physics (Springer, Berlin) 128 (1980).
[3] FARAGO, B. and MEZEI, F., Physica B, C 136 (1986)
100.
[4] MEZEI, F., Neutron Spin Echo and Polarized Neu- trons, Neutron Inelastic Scattering, 1977, IAEA
(Vienna) 1978, pp. 125-134.
[5] PYNN, R., J. Phys. E 11 (1978) 1133.
[6] ALPERT, Y., CSER, L., FARAGO, B., FRANEK, F., MEZEI, F. and OSTANEVICH, Y. M., Biopoly-
mers