The enhanced contrast between the magnetic and nuclear signals in polarised neutron diffraction was first demonstrated in the milestone experiment by Shull, Nathans and colleagues in the late 1950s. The following decades saw steady development of the flipping-ratio technique for the experimental determination of magnetic form factors and mapping out of spin density in metals and intermetallics. Simultaneously, polarization analysis techniques also developed, allowing the unambiguous separation of nuclear, magnetic and nuclear-spin-incoherent scattering contributions.

Continuous improvements in instrumentation and analysis techniques, like e.g. the progress in polarimetry and xyz polarization analysis, possibly combined with wide angle detection, have lead to new applications of polarised-neutron diffraction, addressing an increasingly wider range of scientific puzzles in physics, chemistry, material science and or biology: exploration of spin densities in smart materials, such as giant-magnetoresistant oxides, magnetic shape memory alloys, single molecule magnets or multiferroics, solution of complex magnetic structures, including chirality problems, short-range magnetic/nuclear correlations in frustrated systems, spin susceptibility in superconductors…

To continue to spread the interest in polarised-neutron diffraction amongst the different scientific communities, a three-day International Workshop on Single-Crystal Diffraction with Polarised Neutrons will be held at the ILL in Grenoble on January 23-25, 2013, with emphasis on scientific applications, and the promise of new applications at both reactor and spallation sources.

• Thomas Brückel (JCNS, Germany)
  
• Javier Campo (University Zaragoza, Spain)
  
• Pascale Deen (ESS,  Sweden)
• Blanka Detlefs (ESRF, France)
  
• Jason Gardner (NIST, USA)
• Béatrice Gillon (LLB, France)
  
• Kazuhisa Kakurai (JAEA, Japan)
  
• Sean Langridge (ISIS, UK)
  
• Garry McIntyre (ANSTO, Australia)
• Louis-Pierre Regnault (CEA-G, France)
• Bertrand Roessli (PSI, Switzerland)
  
• Virginie Simonet (CNRS, France)

• Anne Stunault (ILL)
• Laurent Chapon (ILL)
• Eric Ressouche (CEA, Grenoble)
• Andrew Wildes (ILL)

• Laurence Tellier (ILL)

E-mail: flipper2013(at)ill.eu