Measurement of the spin–rotation coupling in neutron polarimetry

Abstract

The effect of spin-rotation coupling is measured for the first time with neutrons. The coupling of spin with the angular velocity of a rotating spin turner can be observed as a phase shift in a neutron polarimeter set-up. After the neutron's spin is rotated by 2π through a rotating magnetic field, different phase shifts are induced for 'up' and 'down' spin eigenstates. This phase difference results in the rotation of the neutron's spin-vector, which turns out to depend solely on the frequency of the rotation of the magnetic field. The experimental results agree well with the solutions acquired by the Pauli-Schrödinger equation.

Development and perfomance of a miniaturised spin rotator suitable for neutron interferometer experiments

“…In a series of articles [3,4], Mashhoon et al proposed to measure the coupling of single neutrons in a neutron interferometer experiment. By modifying the latest proposal [4] to a neutron polarimeter experiment, Demirel et al [5] investigated the spin-rotation coupling using the set-up of a Ramsey interferometer [6] and a rotating magnetic field as rotating system. The relative phase between both spin eigenstates of the rotation was linearly dependent on the rotation frequency in accordance with (1).…”

“…The structure of our paper is as follows: in section 2, the theory regarding spin rotation coupling and the concept of the polarimeter experiment are presented briefly. While the development process is described in section 3, in section 4 the experimental performance tests are described which are a repetition of the experiment of Demirel et al [5].…”

Spin-rotation coupling observed in neutron interferometry

“…For further theoretical contributions about spin-rotation coupling consider [8][9][10][11][12]. Recently, we reported on neutron polarimeter experiments [13,14] whose measurement results can be attributed to the coupling of the neutron's spin with the rotation of a magnetic field. However, the results of this experiments rely on the rotation of the spin orientation which can also be described by the semi-classical Bloch equations.…”

Spin and Maximal Acceleration

“…The interaction of photon [1] and neutron spins [2] with non-inertial fields like rotation [3][4][5][6] has been experimentally verified at the quantum level and spin-induced effects for macroscopic objects have been observed [7][8][9]. It is also known that spin is not a constant of motion when a particle interacts with external fields, either electromagnetic [10], or gravitational [11] and that continual interchange between spin and orbital angular momentum is possible.…”