Determination of effective temperatures of hydrogenated and deuterated alcohols using the VESUVIO spectrometer

Abstract We studied the effective temperatures of hydrogen and deuterium in normal 1-propanol, 2-propanol and n-butanol and fully deuterated 2-propanol and n-butanol at the VESUVIO spectrometer (ISIS Pulsed Neutron and Muon Source, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK). We found that the effective temperature of H (D) is about 3.9 (2.9) times higher than room temperature, where the experiments were performed. The results from the present analysis were compared to the results from the standard data treatment available in the MANTID software for DINS data, and to results from Molecular Dynamics simulations. We find that the final results obtained following these independent routes agree within few points per cent. We also provide a detailed discussion on how to handle experimental backgrounds, the need to analyze groups of detectors to increase the signal-to-background ratio, and we suggest a range of scattering angles for which the analysis is more robust.