Developments of In-Situ SEOP Polarized ³He Neutron Spin Filter in Japan

We launched the polarized ³He neutron spin filters (NSF) project in order to provide neutron polarization for the pulsed neutron beams in Japan. We adopted the in-situ spin exchange optical pumping (SEOP) technique to polarize the nuclear spin of ³He atoms because it has some advantages for our applications. The overall system size is compact and it avoids the problem of the time decay of nuclear spin of ³He thus suppressing the costs of maintenance and providing other advantages [1, 2] with respect to data analysis and quality. In this paper, we performed pulsed neutron beam tests of our compact in-situ SEOP NSF system at the BL10 beamline in the Materials and Life Science Experimental Facility of the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex (J-PARC). The polarization of the ³He gas reached was 73 % and a pump-up time constant of 9.5 h was observed. This paper is a status report about the development of in-situ SEOP NSF system for the pulsed beam at J-PARC.