Neutron scattering

Neutron scattering, the irregular dispersal of free neutrons by matter, can refer to either the naturally occurring physical process itself or to the man-made experimental techniques that use the natural process for investigating materials. The natural/physical phenomenon is of elemental importance in nuclear engineering and the nuclear sciences. Regarding the experimental technique, understanding and manipulating neutron scattering is fundamental to the applications used in crystallography, physics, physical chemistry, biophysics, and materials research. Neutron scattering is practiced at research reactors and spallation neutron sources that provide neutron radiation of varying intensities. Neutron diffraction (elastic scattering) techniques are used for analyzing structures; where inelastic neutron scattering is used in studying atomic vibrations and other excitations. Neutron temperature and neutron moderator "Fast neutrons" (see neutron temperature) have a kinetic energy above 1 MeV. They can be scattered by condensed matter—nuclei having kinetic energies far below 1 eV—as a valid experimental approximation of an elastic collision with a particle at rest. With each collision, the fast neutron transfers a significant part of its kinetic energy to the scattering nucleus (condensed matter), the more so the lighter the nucleus. And with each collision, the "fast" neutron is slowed until it reaches thermal equilibrium with the material in which it is scattered. Neutron moderators are used to produce thermal neutrons, which have kinetic energies below 1 eV (T < 500K). Thermal neutrons are used to maintain a nuclear chain reaction in a nuclear reactor, and as a research tool in neutron scattering experiments and other applications of neutron science (see below). The remainder of this article concentrates on the scattering of thermal neutrons. Because neutrons are electrically neutral, they penetrate more deeply into matter than electrically charged particles of comparable kinetic energy, and thus are valuable as probes of bulk properties.