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Experimental limit on neutron orbital angular momentum detection using polarized He3

D. Sarenac1,*, O. Lailey2,3, D. V. Garrad3, P. R. Vadnere1, N. Shentevski1, C. W. Clark4, D. G. Cory2,5, J. P. Cotter6, H. Ekinci2,3 et al.

M. G. Huber7, J. W. Paster7, Y. Tzeng8, D. Alba Venero9, and D. A. Pushin2,3,†

  • *Contact author: dusansar@buffalo.edu
  • †Contact author: dmitry.pushin@uwaterloo.ca
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Phys. Rev. Research 8, 043027 – Published 8 October, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/1mv3-khf8

Abstract

A recent proposal suggested that neutron orbital angular momentum (OAM) states could be detected via spin-polarized absorption in polarized He3, with predicted cross-section variations linked to the neutron’s OAM. We experimentally tested this hypothesis using spin-polarized neutron beams with OAM =−2 to 2, generated by fork-dislocation phase gratings and transmitted through a polarized He3 cell. Within statistical precision, no OAM-dependent change in the absorption cross section was observed. This null result places stringent constraints on polarized He3-based OAM detection schemes. The absence of an effect in the given regime is traced to the proposal’s disregard of the spatial character of neutron OAM: Unlike spin, OAM arises from the transverse phase structure of the wavefunction and couples only through spatial gradients and overlap. The transverse extent of neutron OAM modes expands rapidly, producing a doughnut-shaped intensity profile with negligible overlap with on-axis He3 nuclei, while off-axis capture samples only a locally uniform phase and reduces the interaction to the known spin dependence. These results establish the limits of absorptive nuclear methods for probing neutron OAM and emphasize the necessity of spatially resolved interactions in any viable detection scheme.

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Phys. Rev. Research 8, 043027– Published 8 October, 2026
  • Received 20 March 2026
  • Accepted 17 August 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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