Neutron spectroscopy

The measured neutrons may be emitted directly (for example, by nuclear reactions), or they may scatter off cold matter before reaching the detector.

[1] This can be used to probe a wide variety of different physical phenomena such as the motions of atoms (diffusional or hopping), the rotational modes of molecules, sound modes and molecular vibrations, recoil in quantum fluids, magnetic and quantum excitations or even electronic transitions.

[4] Much current research focuses on expanding these capabilities to higher energies.

Because a thermal neutron cannot “see” the internal structure of a nucleus, the scattering is considered to be isotropic.

[7][8] The third type of interaction is between the magnetic dipole moment of the neutron and the dipolar field from unpaired electrons.