Investigation of the Neutron Quantum States in the Earth's Gravitational Field
We studied the neutron quantum states in the potential well formed by the Earth's gravitational field and a horizontal mirror. The estimated characteristic sizes of the neutron wave functions in two lowest quantum states correspond to their expectations with an accuracy of ≈25 %. The spatial de...
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Published in | Journal of research of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Vol. 110; no. 3; pp. 263 - 267 |
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Main Authors | , , , , , , , , , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
United States
National Institute of Standards and Technology
01.05.2005
Superintendent of Documents [Gaithersburg, MD] : U.S. Dept. of Commerce, National Institute of Standards and Technology |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | We studied the neutron quantum states in the potential well formed by the Earth's gravitational field and a horizontal mirror. The estimated characteristic sizes of the neutron wave functions in two lowest quantum states correspond to their expectations with an accuracy of ≈25 %. The spatial density distribution in a standing neutron wave above a mirror was measured for a set of a few lowest quantum states. A position-sensitive neutron detector with an extra high spatial resolution of 1 μm to 2 μm was developed and tested for this particular task. Although this experiment was not designed or optimized to search for an additional short-range force, nevertheless it allowed us to slightly improve the published boundary in the nanometer range of characteristic distances. We studied systematical uncertainties in the chosen "flow-through" method as well as the feasibility to improve further the accuracy in this experiment. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 ObjectType-Article-2 ObjectType-Feature-1 |
ISSN: | 1044-677X 2165-7254 |
DOI: | 10.6028/jres.110.036 |