The measurement of the incoherent neutron scattering length of the deuteron

The project has the goal to directly determine the bound spin-dependent neutron–deuteron scattering length b i , d by measuring the pseudomagnetic precession of polarised cold neutrons passing through a target with polarised nuclei. A precise measurement of b i , d can be used to increase the accuracy of the only poorly known doublet neutron–deuteron scattering length b 2 , d which is a crucial input parameter for novel effective field theories. We briefly report on the first measurements performed, discuss the systematics and consequent strategies to improve the accuracy of the experiment.