After successful completion of the course, students are able to prepare not too complex experiment in neutron physics, to carry them out independently, to analyse the measurement data thereby obtained and to interpret the following results. They possess necessary awareness in working with neutron beams, how to manipulate them and the requirements for their detection. They understand by means of selected examples the interaction of neutrons with condensed matter and resulting techniques like neutron imaging, polarised neutron beams and excitation of atomic nuclei after neutron capture. They are capable of starting to work through specialised literature and to specifically employ neutrons in subsequent research projects.
Experiments with imaging methods - neutron radiography and tomography, quantum mechanical states of the neutrons, determination of the neutron magnetic moment, fundamentals of neutron detection, thermal and epithermal neutron flux, concepts and application of neutron activation, experiments for structure determination by neutron diffraction, polarised neutrons.
The laboratroy course consists of short introductory lectures for each of the experiments and the rearch area where it belongs to. Particular emphasis is on experiments with neutron at various instruments at the TRIGA Mark II reactor of the Atominstitut as well as at a special installation containing a laboratory neutron source. A comprehensive introduction of the components of each instrument at its location in the reactor hall is followed by independently carried out experiments - comprising the complete procedure from aligning the sample, the actual data acquisition and the interpretation of the obtained results. Documenting these steps by a protocol for each of the performed experiments is basis for faultless experimentation and functions as preparation for subsequently writing individual academic work.
Course takes place in blocked mode. Period: see "Course dates" below. Starts daily 09:30 at the Atominstitut.
Students work in one or several working groups and write a protocol for each experiment they performed. These protocols are collected in a single document which acts as a protocol for the laboratory course. This comprehensive document provides the basis for evaluation.
email to erwin.jericha@tuwien.ac.at
