Imaging Tool Under Development Exposes Concealed Detonators
upstart writes:
Imaging tool under development exposes concealed detonators:
Sandia quantum-sensing expert Yuan-Yu Jau is helping neutrons develop their talent. He's leading an effort to build a new kind of neutron-based imaging system. When finished, it will enable people to safely examine sealed metal boxes when opening them could be dangerous, whether that's because inside is an explosive weapon or a malfunctioning, high-voltage fire set at a missile range.
"There are no other technologies that can directly image an electric field with physical barriers," Jau said. "One advantage of this imaging technology is that it can absolutely determine the magnitudes and directions of the electric fields."
[...] A metal box, or Faraday cage, blocks electromagnetic waves attempting to enter or exit. This conceals electrically charged devices inside and makes contents difficult to probe without opening the box. Charged particles like protons and electrons have trouble penetrating the barrier, which gives neutral neutrons the opportunity to shine.
Neutrons pass through metal with relative ease, and although they don't have an electric charge, they do spin. That spin changes ever so slightly when the particle passes through an electric field. Jau takes advantage of this phenomenon by polarizing neutrons, so they all have the same spin, and firing them through a metal box into a detector on the other side.
Some of the neutrons will never make it to the detector because they bump into the concealed object. The neutrons that make it create an X-ray-like silhouette on the detector. Of these particles, any that also pass through an electric field will have a different spin when they hit the detector than when they started. This creates a second image that shows where electric fields are. From that picture, operators can decipher the voltage of the object and whether it's charged, even if it is turned off or in sleep mode.
Journal Reference:
Yuan-Yu Jau, Daniel S. Hussey, Thomas R. Gentile, et al. Electric Field Imaging Using Polarized Neutrons, Physical Review Letters (DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.110801)
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