Hybrid Spectrometer (HYSPEC)

Hybrid Spectrometer at SNS Click image for a larger version.

HYSPEC, an acronym for Hybrid Spectrometer, is a unique instrument whose concept combines advantages of the time-of-flight (TOF) technique which is traditionally used at the pulsed sources with those of crystal spectrometers which use continuous neutron beams. It is developed as a collaborative effort of the Instrument Development Team (IDT) composed of scientists from the leading US Universities and National Laboratories and an international group of prominent neutron scattering experts, aimed at designing and building a conceptually new high-flux inelastic neutron spectrometer at the pulsed Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) at Oak Ridge. This effort was initiated and is now lead by the physicists from the Neutron Scattering Group (and former Center for Neutron Science) at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Construction of the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee, which, when completed in 2006, will provide the most intense pulsed neutron beams in the world, will open new exciting opportunities for use in scientific research and industrial development. HYSPEC is optimized for studying the single crystal samples in a broad variety of sample environments, and is intended to supply users of the SNS and the scientific community with a platform for ground-breaking investigations of the low-energy atomic-scale dynamical properties of crystalline solids. It is also planned that this instrument will be equipped with a polarization analysis capability, therefore becoming the first polarized beam spectrometer in the SNS instrument suite, and the first successful polarized beam inelastic instrument at a pulsed spallation source in the world.

Instrument Scientist: Mark Hagen