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Nuclear physics

Neutrons with a twist

Nature volume 525, pages 462–463 (2015)Cite this article

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Neutrons do not normally have orbital angular momentum. But the demonstration that a beam of neutrons can acquire this property, 23 years after it was shown in photons, offers the promise of improved imaging technologies. See Letter p.504

Neutrons were discovered in 1932 by the physicist James Chadwick, and the particles continue to amaze scientists to this day. It was initially thought that neutrons were elementary particles — that is, that they were not composed of other particles. But we now know that, just like protons, neutrons are comprised of three elementary particles called quarks. Quarks have an intrinsic property known as spin angular momentum (or spin), and they endow the neutron with a spin that has a value of ½ħ (where ħ is the reduced Planck constant). On page 504 of this issue, Clark et al.1 show that a free neutron can have a different kind of angular momentum: orbital angular momentum (OAM).

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Figure 1: Orbital angular momentum of neutrons.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Robert W. Boyd is in the Department of Physics, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and the Max Planck Centre for Extreme and Quantum Photonics, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario K1N 6N5, Canada, and at The Institute of Optics, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York.,

    Robert W. Boyd

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  1. Robert W. Boyd
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Correspondence to Robert W. Boyd.

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Boyd, R. Neutrons with a twist. Nature 525, 462–463 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/525462a

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