%0 Journal Article
%A Calvo Padilla, María Luisa
%T Neutron fibres: a three-dimensional analysis of bending losses
%D 2000
%@ 0022-3727
%U https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/59066
%X The confined propagation of slow neutrons along waveguides of a small cross section (fibres), discussed theoretically some time ago and demonstrated experimentally by other authors later, is analysed further. Motivated by those experiments, a three-dimensional quantum-mechanical treatment of the associated bending losses is presented. An approximate (two-parameter) formula is derived for the transmission coefficient Upsilon of the curved fibre, which displays its explicit dependence on the curvature radius Rcu, for 0<Rcu< + ∞. By adjusting one of the parameters (b), consistently with the theoretical analysis, and by fitting the other, the approximate formula describes all measured data for Upsilon. The parameter b (which accounts for the experimental data for Upsilon at large Rcu) allows the estimation of the number of effectively excited modes in the fibre.
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