Instrumentation to Handle Thermal Polarized Neutron Beams

This is a Ph.D. dissertation. Very soon after the discovery of the neutron in 1932 it was recognized that this elementary particle has a magnetic moment, in spite of the fact that it has no net electric charge. The magnetic moments of the neutrons in a beam tend to orient themselves either parallel or antiparallel to any chosen direction, in particular the direction of an external magnetic field. This is due to the fact that the magnetic moment is coupled with the neutron's angular moment (spin), equal to 1/2 elementary unit of angular moment. Contents include: Introduction, Basic Theory for the neutron spin, Basic techniques to handle neutron spins, Neutron larmor precession transmission experiments, Adiabatic rotators for 3-D neutron polarization analysis, Test of adiabatic spin flippers for application at pulsed neutron sources, Zero-field precession induced by adiabatic RF spin flippers, Spin echo SANS based on adiabatic HF flippers in dipole magnets with skew poles, Observation of 4(pi)-periodicity of the spinor using neutron resonance interferometry, Bibliography.