Increased interference fringe visibility from the post fabrication heat treatment of a perfect crystal silicon neutron interferometer

Published

February 8, 2018

Author(s)

Michael G. Huber, Muhammad D. Arif, Thomas H. Gnaupel-Herold, Michelle E. Jamer, Ben Heacock, David G. Cory, R. Haun, Joachim Nsofini, Dimitry A. Pushin, Ivar Taminiau, A.R. Young

Abstract

We find that annealing a previously chemically etched interferometer at 800 °C dramatically increased the interference fringe visibility from 23 % to 90 %. The Bragg plane misalignments were also measured before and after annealing using neutron rocking curves, showing that Bragg plane alignment was improved across the interferometer after annealing. This suggests that current interferometers with low fringe visibility may be salvageable and that annealing may become an important step in the fabrication process of future neutron interferometers, leading to less need for chemical etching and larger more exotic neutron interferometers.

Citation

Review of Scientific Instruments

Volume

89

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5008273

Local Download

Keywords

neutron interferometry

Citation

Huber, M. , Arif, M. , , T. , Jamer, M. , Heacock, B. , Cory, D. , Haun, R. , Nsofini, J. , Pushin, D. , Taminiau, I. and Young, A. (2018), Increased interference fringe visibility from the post fabrication heat treatment of a perfect crystal silicon neutron interferometer, Review of Scientific Instruments, [online], https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5008273, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=924839 (Accessed April 26, 2024)