PONTO—An instrument for imaging with polarized neutrons

An imaging instrument dedicated to radiography and tomography with polarized cold neutrons was installed and successfully tested at the BER II reactor at Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin. The spatial resolution for un-polarized neutrons was less than 85 μm for a point-to-detector distance of 5 mm, in the case of polarized neutrons it was less than 300 μm. With these resolutions, details of magnetic fields in different lead samples below the critical temperature being in the Meissner phase and magnetic flux pinning could be imaged.