What is it about?
A new showcase of the separation of coherent and incoherent neutron scattering with Polarization Analysis: tetrahydrofuran, with van der Waals intermolecular interactions. We compare the results with our previous ones on water, that forms a hydrogen-bond network.
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Photo by César Couto on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Scientifically, the collective dynamics of liquids in the explored length scale region (from intermolecular distances to mesoscales) is an almost unknown territory. This can only be properly explored with neutrons if coherent and incoherent contributions are separated. Water and THF behave in a qualitatively similar way, but the details of the process governing the intermediate length scale collective dynamics are different. Such an insight can only be achieved by polarization analysis (PA). This work shows the power of PA on neutron spectroscopy with sub-meV resolution --this is its technical importance.
Perspectives
This work illustrates that separating coherent and incoherent scattering is crucial, even in deuterated samples. It hopefully encourages the implementation of polarization analysis at different spectrometers. Also, understanding 'simple liquids' still needs more investigation.
Arantxa Arbe
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Collective dynamics and self-motions in the van der Waals liquid tetrahydrofuran from meso- to inter-molecular scales disentangled by neutron spectroscopy with polarization analysis, The Journal of Chemical Physics, May 2023, American Institute of Physics,
DOI: 10.1063/5.0147427.
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