Date/Time
Date(s) - 07/01/2026
10:30 am - 11:30 am

BSB 108

Dr. Bruce D. Gaulin
Scientific Director, Neutrons Canada, and the Canadian Neutron Beam Laboratory
Distinguished University Professor, McMaster University

TITLE: New Directions in Neutron Beam Science for Canada

ABSTRACT:

As you likely know, neutrons are the uncharged constituents of the nuclei in atoms.  They are also unstable outside of nuclei and these two characteristics mean that they are not easy to guide and impossible to store.  Nonetheless, from these unlikely beginnings, neutron scattering has emerged as an essential tool for understanding structure and dynamics in materials, especially magnetic and hydrogenous materials, on a wide range of length and time scales.  I will start by telling you how this occurred, with its birth as a byproduct of the Manhattan Project in the late 1940’s.  Canada plays an outsized role in this story, with McMaster’s Bert Brockhouse sharing the 1994 Nobel Prize for Physics for the invention of neutron spectroscopy.

Today the neutron scattering community is organized around large international centres, where as many as 50 simultaneous neutron studies can be carried out in parallel.  I will focus my talk on current efforts to redefine Canada’s neutron scattering program around  partnerships with these large international centres as well as the exploitation of the McMaster Nuclear Reactor, and the launch of the Canadian Neutron Beam Laboratory, as a domestic centre for neutron beam science.