BRISP - A New Thermal Neutron Brillouin Scattering Spectrometer at the Institut Laue-Langevin

BRISP is an Italian-German project for the design, construction and operation of an innovative thermal neutron BRIllouin SPectrometer installed at the High Flux Reactor of the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL, Grenoble). The project has been financed by INFM (Italy) and BMBF (Germany). The spectrometer exploits the time-of-flight concept to perform neutron inelastic scattering experiments over a wide energy range at low momentum transfer. Access to this region enables addressing a number of longstanding scientific questions where experiments have not been feasible until now due to the kinematic restrictions of existing neutron spectrometers. The new possibilities offered by BRISP span from the detailed investigation of magnetic dynamics in condensed matter to fluid dynamics in systems which are close to their liquid-vapour critical point. Installation of all the instrument components has been completed and in last August the first extraction and imaging of the monochromatic beam have been accomplished. BRISP will start its commissioning phase at the beginning of the next Reactor cycle and it will be available to users by the end of 2005.