First results from Tyrex, the new polarized-3He filling station at ILL

A new filling station for nuclear polarisation of 3He gas has been constructed at the ILL, Grenoble. The “Tyrex” machine uses metastability-exchange optical pumping for polarising the 3He gas at about 1 mbar pressure. The gas is then compressed up to several bars via a hydraulic titanium-alloy piston compressor. The machine can provide about 1.5 bar-l/h of polarised gas-an order-of-magnitude increase over the first filling station installed at the ILL in 1996. The compressed, polarised gas is used for polarising neutron beams for condensed-matter and fundamental physics experiments. First results are presented and examples of implementations on existing neutron instruments at ILL are described.