Study Highlights Usefulness of Theoretical Predictions

An international team of scientists have utilised the UK’s neutron and muon source, the ISIS facility, to study the structure of electrons in useful materials – such as those with superconductivity or magnetism.

The experimental techniques often used to study electrons, such as photoemission spectroscopy have limitations, but until recently it was not thought to be feasible to measure the electronic structure of materials with correlated electrons using neutrons.

However, a team of researchers led by the US Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory have successfully used the Merlin Instrument at STFC’s ISIS facility using neutron scattering to see how electrons behave at high or low temperatures – and compared these results to the theoretical predictions.

STFC scientist Dr Devashibhai Adroja said: “Merlin was the perfect piece of equipment for this experiment because it is designed to study the behaviour of electrons in correlated materials like these. Neutron scattering is vital because it can comprehensively witness the electrons interacting in four dimensions, making it the only technique able to create results which can be compared to the theoretical calculations.”

Dr Ray Osborn, a senior scientist at Argonne, said: "Neutrons are absolutely essential for this research. Neutron scattering is the only technique that is sensitive to the whole spectrum of electronic fluctuations in four dimensions of momentum and energy and the only technique that can be reliably compared to realistic theoretical calculations on an absolute intensity scale."

In projects where the gap between the experimental results and theoretical models becomes narrower, computer simulations could be considered a key tool in the discovery of new materials and probing their uses through materials engineering.