Neutron Optics Theory for Entangled Neutron Beams*

The theory of single-particle entangled neutron scattering from entangled degrees of freedom in condensed matter is under development [1]. By the optical theorem of scattering theory, entanglement-dependent effects in nonforward scattering must also appear at some level in the forward direction, which is the domain of neutron optics. We will discuss the steps we have taken toward this development [2,3] and present applications in neutron-antineutron oscillations under mirror reflection conditions [4].

[1] A. A. M. Irfan, P. Blackstone, et al., Quantum Entangled-Probe Scattering Theory, arXiv: 2008.04328

[2] J. Shen, S. Kuhn, et al., Unveiling contextual realities by microscopically entangling a neutron, Nature Comm. 11, 930 (2020). arXiv: 1908.09823

[3] S. Lu, A. A. M. Irfan, et al. An Operator Analysis of Contextuality Witness Measurements for Multimode-Entangled Single Neutron Interferometry, Phys. Rev. A 101, 042318 (2020). arXiv:1912.10282.

[4] K. V. Protasov, V. Gudkov, et al., Theoretical Analysis of Antineutron-Nucleus Data needed for Antineutron Mirrors in Neutron-Antineutron Oscillation Experiments, Phys. Rev. D 102, 075025 (2020). arXiv: 2009.11467.