STUDY OF SLOW DYNAMICAL PROCESSES BY NEUTRON-SPIN-ECHO

Abstract

Conventional resolution inelastic neutron scattering spectroscopy allows us to explore the behaviour of condensed matter essentially on the time scale of thermal atomic vibrations. By the application of the Neutron Spin Echo trick, which enables us to get around the Liouville theorem limitation of conventional methods, the resolution can be improved very substantially. This opened up the field for the study of a large variety of slow motion phenomena (critical slowing down, relaxation effects, disordered dynamics, soft matter), i.e. the investigation of processes on a mesoscopic time scale between microscopic collision times and macroscopic dynamics.