Final energy distributions in deep inelastic neutron scattering experiments

We analyzed the final energy distributions of the scattered neutrons in a deep inelastic neutron scattering experiment and assessed its significance by comparison with the commonly employed approach, where only a single final energy corresponding to the main peak of the resonant filter is considered. As a result of our analysis, we found that a correct description of the final energy distributions plays an important role in the description of the observed neutron Compton profiles. A direct consequence of this conclusion is that an accurate obtainment of the momentum distributions and peak areas depends on a detailed characterization of the incident neutron spectrum, the filter total cross-section and the detector efficiency as a function of the energy. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.