The measurement of the incoherent neutron scattering length of the deuteron

The project has the goal to directly determine the bound spin-dependent neutron–deuteron scattering length bi,dbi,d by measuring the pseudomagnetic precession of polarised cold neutrons passing through a target with polarised nuclei. A precise measurement of bi,dbi,d can be used to increase the accuracy of the only poorly known doublet neutron–deuteron scattering length b2,db2,d which is a crucial input parameter for novel effective field theories. We briefly report on the first measurements performed, discuss the systematics and consequent strategies to improve the accuracy of the experiment.