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Physical Review Letters

The Orbital Angular Momentum of Neutrons and the Operation of the Neutron Interferometer

R. L. Cappelletti, Terrence Jach, John Vinson, Samuel A. Werner

Published Jan 1, 2018• 0 citations
Publisher
DOI
10.1002/https://dx.doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.120.090402

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In a Nature LETTER [1], a control of neutron angular momentum was apparently demonstrated using a neutron crystal interferometer. In the meantime, a number of highly interesting articles have been published dealing with the n-OAM and neutron interferometry, citing [1]. We show that the interpretation of [1] having detected a n-OAM is incorrect for several serious reasons and point out inconsistencies. Based only on the theory of dynamical neutron diffraction, we calculate all the interferograms and show perfect agreement with those given in [1]. There was no need to assume an additional n-OAM because no additional effect was observed that could not be explained by standard theory.
Abstract We present calculations of interferograms (interference patterns) of one or multiple spiral phase plates that would be observed with a perfect crystal neutron interferometer of Mach–Zehnder type. A spiral phase plate (SPP) in one of the two coherent beam paths produces a twist in the phase front and thus a vortex beam with intrinsic angular momentum, which in the case of neutrons should be observed as a characteristic interference pattern that appears complementary to each other in both detectors behind the interferometer. Adding additional SPPs in one beam path of the interferometer yield interference patterns similar to that of a single SPP but only due to the cumulative step height. All simulated interferograms have been calculated on the basis of dynamical neutron diffraction without any assumption of a neutron orbital angular momentum and show very convincing agreement with experimental results from the literature, see e.g. (C. W. Clark, R. Barankov, M. G. Huber, M. Arif, D. G. Cory, and D. A. Pushin, “Controlling neutron orbital angular momentum,” Nature, vol. 525, pp. 504–506, 2015). In particular, this clarifies, that the cited experiments do not give evidence of the quantization of interactions caused by a twist of the phase front of a neutron wave in the interferometer and thus no evidence for the effect of a neutron orbital angular momentum.
A coupling between Earth's rotation and orbital angular momentum (OAM), known as the Sagnac effect, is observed in entangled neutrons produced using a spin-echo interferometer. After correction for instrument systematics the measured coupling is within 5% of theory, with an uncertainty of 7.2%. The OAM in our setup is transverse to the propagation direction and scales linearly with neutron wavelength (4–12.75 Å), so the Sagnac coupling can be varied without mechanically rotating the device, which avoids systematic errors present in previous experiments. The detected transverse OAM of our beam corresponds to 4098 ± 295 ℏ Å − 1 , 10 5 times lower than in the previous neutron experiments. This demonstrates the feasibility of using the Sagnac effect to definitively measure neutron OAM and paves the way towards a future observation of the quantum Sagnac effect.