Quantum States

The existence of these quantum states of matter (neutron) has been demonstrated for the very first time in 2002 at the ILL by a series of ground-breaking experiments with ultracold neutrons (UCN). For details see here. By 2021, two ILL instruments, GRANIT and qBounce, implement a neutron quantum-state spectrometry based on that historical experiment

We present here the principle of these experiments. The animation shows what would have been observed if the neutron behaved classically and what was really observed.

Neutron quantum states in a gravitational field (html - 856 )

Animation developed with Hype and javascript by Francis Gorgé on the basis of javascript code by A.Filhol.
© 2012-2018 Institut Laue-Langevin, A. Filhol and Francis Gorgé

2011 - A first version was developed in Flash + Action Script 2 by Laurent Thion and A. Filhol. However, this language was too slow and had to much limitations, e.g. a large enough number of neutrons could not be generated and thus the final curve was not correct.