Anomalous neutron Compton scattering in metallic hydrides:: new experiments

The time-of-flight spectra of the neutron Compton scattering of solid palladium hydrides were measured at room temperature. This experiment, which was motivated by previous measurements on liquid H2O/D2O mixtures as mel as on niobium hydrides, showed anomalous behaviour of the total neutron scattering cross sections. Whereas at small scattering angles the scattering cross-section ratio for protons with respect to that for palladium corresponded to conventional theory, a strong decrease was observed for increasing angles. When converting the angle dependences into scattering time dependences both niobium hydrides and palladium hydrides give the same result, although having different crystallographic features. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.