Birefringent neutron prisms for spin echo scattering angle measurement

In the first decade of the 19th century, an English chemist, William Wollaston, invented an arrangement of birefringent prisms that splits a beam of light into two spatially separated beams with orthogonal polarizations. We have constructed similar devices for neutrons using triangular cross-section solenoids and employed them for Spin Echo Scattering Angle Measurement (SESAME). A key difference between birefringent neutron prisms and their optical analogues is that it is hard to embed the former in a medium which has absolutely no birefringence because this implies the removal of all magnetic fields. We have overcome this problem by using the symmetry properties of the Wollaston neutron prisms and of the overall spin echo arrangement. These symmetries cause a cancellation of Larmor phase aberrations and provide robust coding of neutron scattering angles with simple equipment.