Enabling the orbital degree of freedom for neutron experiments*

Neutrons have been highly successful in precision measurements and experimental explorations of fundamental physics using the three easily accessible degrees of freedom: spin, path, and energy. Our recent work has enabled the use of orbital angular momentum in neutron beams, which essentially provides an additional quantized degree of freedom. We have demonstrated methods that are practical with the existing technologies and show the experimental achievement of neutron helical wavefronts that carry well-defined orbital angular momentum values. In this talk I will describe the work and several proposed applications for searches of new interactions with the orbital degree of freedom. We hope that these advances open the doors for the next generation of high impact neutron experiments.