We present the results of a neutron-reflectivity study of the universal critical-adsorption profile near the liquid-vapor interface of a binary-liquid mixture (methanol + deuterated cyclohexane) near criticality. As the critical temperature is approached from the one-phase region, we observed an abrupt decrease in the intensity of the specularly reflected neutron beam near the total-reflection edge. By interpreting the observation as the expected neutron-reflectivity discontinuity associated with a slowly decaying power-law profile, we evaluated the power-law exponent (p/v = 0.50~0.05). PACS numbers: 68.35.Rh, 61.12. -q, 68.10.Jy P(x) = Ppx~~' as x 0, P e ' asx~~, where P p and P are amplitudes. A recent field theoretical calculation of CA suggests Po = 0.94~0.05 [3]. The theoretically expected exponent for the 3D Ising model is P/v = (d -2 + il)/2 = 0.52, where il is a critical exponent and d is the dimension of space. Experimental studies of CA in binary-liquid mixtures have been carried out mainly by optical methods, e.g. , ellipsometry [5 -7], reflectometry [8], and fluorescence measurements [9]. From the analyses of the fluorescence measurements, it was estimated that p/ v = 0.3 -0.6 [9]. In addition, the optical reflectivity and ellipticity measurements yielded the exponents for the first moment of the concentration profile [8] and the adsorption excess amount [6]. Although the results of these studies seemed to agree with the scaling theory, to our knowledge no accurate determination of both the exponent and the After Fisher and de Gennes' original work on the scaling theory of critical adsorption (CA) [1], it is now generally accepted that [2], for systems belonging to the 3D Ising universality class near criticality, such asa binary-liquid mixture near its critical temperature T" the order parameter at a normal distance z from a planar interface deviates from its equilibrium bulk value according to the following scaling law:for z greater than a molecular length. Here t is the reduced temperature (T -T,)/T"mo and p are the amplitude and the critical exponent of the bulk twophase coexistence curve, respectively [3], $(t) is the bulk correlation length defined in the exponential form of the density-density correlation function, and diverges as g(t) = got near criticality. The order parameter is defined as the deviation of the volume fraction @(z) of the preferentially adsorbed component from its bulk value, i.e. , m(z) = @(z) -@(~). The scaling theory suggests that the universal scaling function P(x) should satisfy the following conditions [3,4]:(3) amplitudes from direct probing of the adsorption profile has been reported.Thus we set out to use neutron reflectometry [10], which in principle has nanometer resolution [11],to study CA. The purpose of this Letter is to demonstrate that, under certain conditions (see below), important profile information can be obtained from analyses of neutron-reAectivity data near the total reflection edge (TRE).The underlying physics in the new approach adopted in this work ...