Application of a portable 3He-based polarization insert at a time-of-flight neutron reflectometer

Abstract The suitability of a transportable 3 He-spin filter as temporary broadband polarizer for a Time-of-Flight neutron reflectometer is demonstrated. A simple two-wavelength method for characterisation of a 3 He-spin filter is proposed, which can be applied even if the absolute transmittance of the 3 He-spin filter cannot be accurately determined. We demonstrate the data treatment procedure for extracting the spin-up and spin-down neutron reflectivity from measurements obtained with a time dependent 3 He polarization. The extraction of a very weak magnetic signal from reflectivity data, measured on the in-situ grown magnetic heterostructure Fe 1 nm / Cu 20 nm / Si substrate in an externally applied magnetic field of 30 mT is presented and compared to similar measurements on the growth stage Cu 20 nm / Si substrate of the very same sample, which does not yet contain any magnetic material.