Extracting fluid structures from neutron diffraction data

The singular value decomposition theorem of numerical analysis is applied to the problem of reducing neutron coherent scattering data for liquids. The technique is illustrated by application to liquid states of Ar, Ga, and Cuse. The resulting pair correlation functions h(r) are at least as consistent as those in the literature based on the same scattering data. A peculiar feature in the residual structure factors is present in both the literature results and those generated by the new method.