DOE OSTI · 3364880
Anomalous neutron nuclear-magnetic interference spectroscopy
Abstract
The electron–phonon interaction plays a critical role in materials’ electrical, thermal, optical, and superconducting properties. However, measuring the phonon mode-resolved electron–phonon interaction has been challenging. Here we propose neutron-scattering-based Anomalous Neutron nUclear-Magnetic Interference Spectroscopy (ANUBIS), where the co-existence of neutron nuclear scattering and magnetic scattering leads to anomalous dynamical structure factor under the presence of the electron–phonon interaction. Such anomalous structure factor is linear in electron–phonon coupling constant at the phonon wavevector, and is directly proportional to the momentum and energy-resolved dielectric function. The experimental configuration can be achieved using existing polarized inelastic neutron scattering setup, and an order-of-magnitude estimate shows the viability to observe the anomalous scattering signal is around to 10 –4 to 10 –3 relative to phonon scattering, which is examined through the preliminary experiments and achievable at emerging neutron facilities. As a result, our proposal offers an alternative neutron-based metrology to probe the crucial electronic properties.
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Fu, Chuliang [Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)] (ORCID:0000000346269622), Siriviboon, Phum [Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)], Boonkird, Artittaya [Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)], Landry, Michael [Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)], Mak, Kiran [Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)] (ORCID:000900027556783X), Cheng, Mouyang [Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)], Lynn, Jeffrey [National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD (United States)], Li, Chen [University of California, Riverside, CA (United States)] (ORCID:0000000207585334), Xie, Weiwei [Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI (United States)], Maity, Avishek [Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)] (ORCID:0000000324297948), Matsuda, Masaaki [Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)] (ORCID:0000000322099526), Li, Mingda [Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)] (ORCID:0000000270556368). 2025-07-18. Anomalous neutron nuclear-magnetic interference spectroscopy. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mtphys.2025.101777
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