FARO: A new type of neutron spectrometer with flux and resolution optimized.

A new type of high intensity and high resolution time-of-flight near backscattering neutron spectrometer is presented which is capable of an energy resolution of 4.0 μeV with a data collection rate an order of magnitude larger than current near backscattering spectrometers capable of this resolution. This design challenges two accepted norms of high resolution indirect neutron spectrometers: it uses large mosaic pyrolytic graphite (002) crystals instead of nearly perfect silicon (111) crystals to select the final neutron energy, and it operates well away from the normal backscattering condition 2φ ≈ 180° instead using 2φ = 160°. This paper describes the methodology behind this spectrometer along with ray-tracing simulations of the instrument using the McStas program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]