New concepts for neutron instrumentation

With the progress made in establishing new coating and grinding techniques and the availability of new simulation tools significant progress has been made in increasing the performance of optical components being used for neutron instrumentation. These include passive components like honeycomb lenses, focusing collimators, devices using supermirror coatings as well as active phase space transformers. In this contribution I shall discuss various possibilities of how the phase space of neutron beams can be adapted to match the needs of neutron beam lines and how to transport the neutrons efficiently from the moderator to the sample and detector. It is shown that elliptic guides can lead to significant flux gains while improving the resolution of spectrometers. The power of the new focusing techniques will be demonstrated for triple axis, time of flight and spin-echo spectroscopy as well as for imaging with neutrons. (c) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.