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W. Mach, H. Abele, H. Filter, Y. Hasegawa, E. Jericha, G. Konrad, St. Sponar, M. Villa, M. Zawisky:
"Current projects at the Atominstitut";
Poster: Symposium "Future Possible Use of Neutron and Synchrotron Sources", Graz; 2016-09-15 - 2016-09-16.

The nuclear reactor of the Atominstitut (ATI) has celebrated its 54th birthday this year but the science around the neutron source stays up-to-date and vivid. While the whole reactor instrumentation and control system was updated last year as an commitment to the future, a completely new multi-purpose instrument will be installed this year: the thermal white neutron beam. Its high thermal neutron flux of ~10⁷ neutrons/cm²/s will be the foundation for several very different new experiments. Furthermore, the new reactor instrumentation offers the possibility to pulse the reactor for achieving a high flux of ~2x10¹⁰ neutrons/cm²/s with this instrument.

MONOPOL is an in-house invented method to select wavelengths and chop polarized neutron beams. It works by using a sophisticated variable magnetic field configuration and is going to be tested for the first time at a white thermal neutron spectrum at this new neutron beam.

The neutron interferometer group has performed so called weak measurements to demonstrate a new kind of quantum paradox, and also new upper bounds for dark energy chameleon fields were found with neutron interferometry. The in-house neutron polarimeter tested Heisenberg´s uncertainty relation and found new insights.

Further, ATI has a long tradition in instrument and method development. A current project are new neutron detectors with a spatial resolution of ~1,5 μm. Theses detectors are used at different neutron sources in combination with several experiments to search for dark matter and dark energy in cosmology.

With the only nuclear reactor in Austria, the ATI is the only institution with a combined broad knowledge in nuclear physics, reactor physics, radiochemistry and radiation protection. For example during the disaster in Fukushima a hotline-team was installed at the ATI for answering questions of concerned citizens. The close cooperation with the IAEA shows the importance of this knowledge in a globalized world. Over 400 tours for about 6 000 people were held for non-scientific people in 2015. This important transfer of knowledge also shows a high interest in our work by the public.