Intrinsic Orbital Angular Momentum States of Neutrons

It has been shown that single-particle wave functions, of both photons and electrons, can be created with a phase vortex, i.e., an intrinsic orbital angular momentum (OAM). A recent experiment has claimed similar success using neutrons [C. W. Clark et al., Nature, 525, 504 (2015)NATUAS0028-083610.1038/nature15265]. We show that their results are insufficient to unambiguously demonstrate OAM, and they can be fully explained as phase contrast interference patterns. Furthermore, given the small transverse coherence length of the neutrons in the original experiment, the probability that any neutron was placed in an OAM state is vanishingly small. We highlight the importance of the relative size of the coherence length, which presents a unique challenge for neutron experiments compared to electron or photon work, and we suggest improvements for the creation of neutron OAM states.