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Updated: Aug 15, 2025

Measuring the Time-Evolution of Nanoscale Materials with Stopped-Flow and Small-Angle Neutron Scattering
Published on: August 6, 2021
Lorentz factor for time-of-flight neutron Bragg and total scattering
Yuanpeng Zhang1, Jue Liu1, Matthew G Tucker1
1Neutron Scattering Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, 1 Bethel Valley Road, Oak Ridge, TN 37830, USA.
Abstract:
The three fundamental origins of the Lorentz factor for neutron time-of-flight powder diffraction are revisited. A detailed derivation of the Lorentz factor is presented in the context of diffuse scattering modelling in reciprocal space when perfect periodicity is assumed, and the total scattering pattern is constructed in its discrete form - the factor in this case becomes 1/Q2 (or d2). Discussion is also presented with respect to practical data reduction where a vanadium measurement is usually taken as the normalization factor (to account for various factors such as detector efficiency), and it is shown that the existence of the Lorentz factor is independent of such a normalization process.
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