Characterizing complex structured neutron states

There has been rapid progress in the production and detection of structured neutron waves within the last 10 years. The ability to rapidly generate custom structured neutron input states to experiments for material characterization and fundamental physics is invaluable due to the tuneable additional degrees of freedom. Our goal is to initiate the widespread use of structured neutron beams at SANS beamlines. To achieve this, we plan to generate new structured neutron states at SANS2D using arrays of millions of micron sized diffraction gratings and exploit the TOF information for measuring large wavelength ranges in single measurements. In the proposed experiment we aim to characterize several structured neutron states such as neutron Airy vortex beams, neutron Airy beam self-healing and high order neutron OAM. Advancements in grating fabrication techniques have also made it possible to create high aspect ratio phase gratings for generating neutron OAM beams with significantly reduced acquisition times that we plan on testing and characterizing. These findings are expected to significantly advance our capabilities in generating complex structured neutron states that can be used as custom input states for material characterization experiments, exploiting additional degrees of freedom that have not been analyzed before.