Transmission bender for polarizing neutrons

Abstract A system of a polarizing solid state bender and a collimator was built and tested. The bender consists of a stack of thin silicon wafers coated with polarizing FeCo–Si supermirrors. The stack is deflected in the middle by one wafer thickness. Inserted in an unpolarized neutron beam this device works as a spin splitter by transmitting the spin down component without any change in its flight path and reflecting the spin up component. With a collimator behind the bender it can be selected which one of the spin components is transmitted. In this way a transmission polarizer for neutrons with wavelengths above 4 A was built which has a total length of less than 10 cm.