[Neutron] Cool Fields at Chalk River

[Buyers, Bill - NRC]

To Neutron Mailing List at ANL 
>From Bill Buyers, Chalk River, Neutron Program for Materials Research, NRC
Canada 
Cool Fields at Chalk River 
Science at 300 mK and 9T 
I am pleased to let users know that our new M5 magnet-cryostat is
commissioned and working well. We can now study samples in a vertical field
of 9 Tesla at temperatures as low as 300 mK. Oxford Instruments designed and
built the cryostat at the request of Jason Gardner (now at BNL) and it was
purchased by Malcolm Collins, McMaster, with a grant from NSERC. It was
commissioned by Chalk River and Oxford technical staff. The first
experiments in September were successfully run by Helmut Fritzsche, whom we
recently welcomed when he arrived from the Hahn-Meitner Institute to take up
a position in the NRC NPMR neutron group. I believe many users will want to
use this splendid M5 facility to explore in H and T magnetic phases and
interfaces, by means of polarized diffraction and reflectometry, as well as
spin excitations.  
See details at <http://neutron.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/m5.html>  
The "Restoration" 
This is not about restoration of the monarchy but instead of the M2
horizontal field magnet-cryostat! Many will know that this was, at Chalk
River in 1986, the first in the world to allow almost unimpeded access for
neutron beams (335 degrees). It has attracted many users because the field
can be rotated along any axis in the crystal, and provides unique
information on phase transitions, spin polarized response, magnetic
superlattices and reflectometry. The M2 vacuum failed a couple of years ago
and removed a most attractive capability. I am pleased to report that the
Horizontal-Field Magnet Cryostat M2 has now been repaired and refurbished.
This results from the year-long detective work of the youngest member of
technical staff, Andrew Cull, and of our Head Technologist, Mel Potter. M2
is now back in business and has performed several experiments over the
summer. 
The Source 
NRU is working well and serves 5 instruments 
(see <http://neutron.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/home.html> ).  
Visitors who do experiments at other laboratories tell me that the focussed
beam of DUALSPEC (C5) delivers the third highest thermal neutron detector
throughput for a give crystal and resolution.  Some scientists I meet seem
to think the Chalk River neutron program died in 1997 when AECL cut its
funding. Far from it - we have almost 200 users per year.  NRC (National
Research Council Canada) took us over and helped us to grow greatly as
regards funds, facilities, scientists and post-docs. 
Bill Buyers



NRC-Neutron Program for Materials Research
Chalk River Laboratories
Chalk River, Ontario  K0J 1J0, Canada
William.Buyers at nrc-cnrc.gc.ca
Tel.  613-584-8811 e.4532 (W) 613-584-2669 (H)
Fax. 613-584-4040

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