3He selection rules for neutron helical waves

Recent research has focused on enabling access to new degrees of freedom in order to expand the neutron toolbox for characterizing emerging materials. This includes our achievement of neutron structured waves that carry well-defined orbital angular momentum (OAM) [Sarenac et al., Science Advances 8 (46), eadd2002, 2022]. The newly developed methods provide access to neutron helical waves and the orbital degree of freedom for the first time, and paves the way for novel studies of quantum phases and topological materials. Here we aim to directly test whether the neutron helical waves will manifest a unique absorption interaction when interacting with polarized 3He, as predicted by a recent theory paper [Physical Review C 105, no. 6 (2022): L061601, 2022].