Attosecond quantum entanglement in neutron Compton scattering from water in the keV range

Abstract

Scattering of neutrons in the 24-150 keV incident energy range from H2O relative to that of D2O and H2O-D2O mixtures was reported very recently. Studying time-of-flight integrated intensities, the applied experimental procedure appears to be transparent and may open up a novel class of neutron experiments regarding the "anomalous" scattering from protons, firstly observed in our experiment at ISIS in the 5-100 eV range. The keV-results were analyzed within standard theory, also including (1) multiple scattering and (2) the strong incident-energy dependence of the neutron-proton cross section in this energy range. The analysis reveals a striking anomalous ratio of scattering intensity of H2O relative to that of D2O of about 20%, thus being in surprisingly good agreement with the earlier results of the original experiment at ISIS.