Polarized off-specular scattering of 11B4C incorporated Fe/Si multilayers for neutron optics

For polarizing neutron mirrors it is of utmost importance to investigate the magnetic properties that leads to the polarization, especially magnetic domain sizes that usually are in the order of 1 to 50 µm. In this application, we propose to investigate polarized off-specular scattering of Fe/Si and Fe/Si + 11B4C multilayers to analyze the magnetic domains and how differently they affect the scattering and polarization in the off-specular directions. From pre-studies the 11B4C incorporated Fe/Si multilayers show great potential due to its higher reflectivity, polarization and significant reduction in magnetic coercivity. We believe that the off-specular scattering will be far less for the 11B4C incorporated samples and that we can gain important knowledge from polarization analysis on the off-specularly scattered neutrons to learn about the magnetic domains and its influence on polarization.