Spin to Orbital Angular Momentum Conversion in the Neutron Nucleus Weak Interaction

@misc{geerits2026spin,
  title = {{Spin to Orbital Angular Momentum Conversion in the Neutron Nucleus Weak Interaction}},
  author = {Niels Geerits and Stephan Sponar and Hartmut Lemmel and Andrea Piovano and Kyle Steffen and William Michael Snow},
  howpublished = {arXiv},
  year = {2026},
  month = nov,
  doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2611.09677},
  eprint = {2611.09677},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.09677},
  note = {CC BY 4.0},
}

TY  - UNPB
TI  - Spin to Orbital Angular Momentum Conversion in the Neutron Nucleus Weak Interaction
AU  - Niels Geerits
AU  - Stephan Sponar
AU  - Hartmut Lemmel
AU  - Andrea Piovano
AU  - Kyle Steffen
AU  - William Michael Snow
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/11/06
PB  - arXiv
DO  - 10.48550/arxiv.2611.09677
UR  - https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.09677
AB  - The neutron nucleus weak interaction generates a small parity non conserving rotation of the neutron spin as the neutron moves through matter. This parity-odd neutron rotary power can reach up to 2.2e-3 rad * cm-1 for slow neutrons in 139La, which possesses a p-wave resonance at 0.7 eV where the parity-odd asymmetry is greatly amplified. This spin rotation must conserve total angular momentum. Here we show that this conservation occurs through neutron orbital angular momentum generation. We experimentally demonstrate that a neutron prepared initially in a longitudinal spin-orbit state experiences no change in total angular momentum.
ER  -