Generation and detection of spin-orbit coupled neutron beams

Dusan Sarenac; Connor Kapahi; Wangchun Chen; Charles W Clark; David G Cory; Michael G Huber; Ivar Taminiau; Kirill Zhernenkov; Dmitry A Pushin

doi:10.1073/pnas.1906861116

Generation and detection of spin-orbit coupled neutron beams

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2019 Oct 8;116(41):20328-20332. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1906861116. Epub 2019 Sep 23.

Authors

Dusan Sarenac¹, Connor Kapahi^{2

3}, Wangchun Chen^{4

5}, Charles W Clark⁶, David G Cory^{2

7

8

9}, Michael G Huber¹⁰, Ivar Taminiau², Kirill Zhernenkov^{2

11

12}, Dmitry A Pushin^{2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Institute for Quantum Computing, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, Canada; dsarenac@uwaterloo.ca.
² Institute for Quantum Computing, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, Canada.
³ Department of Physics, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, Canada.
⁴ NIST Center for Neutron Research, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD 20899.
⁵ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742.
⁶ Joint Quantum Institute, National Institute of Standards and Technology and University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742.
⁷ Department of Chemistry, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, Canada.
⁸ Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, ON N2L 2Y5, Canada.
⁹ Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, Toronto, Ontario M5G 1Z8, Canada.
¹⁰ Physical Measurement Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD 20899.
¹¹ Jülich Centre for Neutron Science at Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Zentrum, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, 85748 Garching, Germany.
¹² Frank Laboratory of Neutron Physics, Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, 141980 Dubna, Moscow Region, Russia.

Abstract

Spin-orbit coupling of light has come to the fore in nanooptics and plasmonics, and is a key ingredient of topological photonics and chiral quantum optics. We demonstrate a basic tool for incorporating analogous effects into neutron optics: the generation and detection of neutron beams with coupled spin and orbital angular momentum. The ³He neutron spin filters are used in conjunction with specifically oriented triangular coils to prepare neutron beams with lattices of spin-orbit correlations, as demonstrated by their spin-dependent intensity profiles. These correlations can be tailored to particular applications, such as neutron studies of topological materials.

Keywords: neutron optics; orbital angular momentum; spin-orbit coupling.