We have investigated structure and relaxation phenomena for ionic liquids 1-octyl-3-methylimidazolium hexafluorophosphate (C8mimPF6) and bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide (C8mimTFSI) by means of neutron diffraction and neutron spin echo (NSE) techniques. The diffraction patterns show two distinct peaks appeared at scattering vectors Q of 0.3 and 1.0 Å(-1). The former originates from the nanoscale structure characteristic to ionic liquids and the latter due to the interionic correlations. Interestingly, the intensity of the low-Q peak drastically grows upon cooling and keeps growing even below the glass transition temperature. The NSE measurements have been performed at these two Q positions, to explore the time evolution of each correlation. The relaxation related to the ionic correlation (ionic diffusion) is of Arrhenius-type and exhibits nonexponential behavior. The activation energy (Ea) of the ionic diffusion, which is linked to viscosity, depends on the type of anion; the larger is the anion size, the smaller Ea becomes for most of anions. On the other hand, two kinds of relaxation processes, slower and faster ones, are found at the low-Q peak position. The most significant finding is that the fraction of the slower relaxation increases and that of the faster one decreases upon cooling. Combining the NSE data with the diffraction data, we conclude that there exist two parts in ILs: one with the ordered nanostructure exhibiting the slow relaxation, and the other with disordered structure showing faster relaxation. The structure and dynamics of ILs are heterogeneous in nature, and the fraction of each part changes with temperature.

Using single crystal inelastic neutron scattering with and without the application of an external magnetic field and powder neutron diffraction, we have characterized magnetic interactions in Ba3Cr2O8. Even without a field, we found that there exist three singlet-to-triplet excitation modes in the (h, h, l) scattering plane. Our complete analysis shows that the three modes are due to spatially anisotropic interdimer interactions that are induced by lattice distortions of the tetrahedron of oxygens surrounding the Jahn-Teller active Cr5+(3d1). The strong intradimer coupling of J0=2.38(2) meV and weak interdimer interactions (|Jinter|< or =0.52(2) meV) makes Ba3Cr2O8 a good model system for weakly coupled s=1/2 quantum spin dimers.

We performed high-resolution angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy on La1.85Sr0.15CuO4 to study the nature of the single-particle excitation gap. We found that there is a well-defined superconducting coherence peak in the off-nodal region while it is strongly suppressed around the antinode. The momentum dependence of the single-particle excitation gap shows a striking deviation from the dx-y2--wave symmetry with anomalous enhancement around the antinode in both the superconducting and the pseudogap state. The observed close correlation between the superconducting coherence peak and the pseudogap suggests a substantial contribution of the pseudogap to the anomalous behavior of the gap in the superconducting state.

Low-energy spin excitations were investigated in the static stripe phase of La2-xSrxCuO4 using elastic and inelastic neutron scattering on single crystals. For x=1/8 in which long-range static stripe order exists, an energy gap of E(g)=4 meV exists in the excitation spectrum in addition to strong quasielastic, incommensurate spin fluctuations associated with the static stripes. When x increases, the spectral weight of the spin fluctuations shifts from the quasielastic continuum to the excitation spectrum above E(g). The dynamic correlation length as a function of energy and the temperature evolution of the energy spectrum suggest a phase separation of two distinct magnetic phases in real space.

Nanometer-sized materials attract much attention because their physical and chemical properties are substantially different from those of bulk materials owing to their size and surface effects. In this work, neutron powder diffraction experiments on the nanoparticles of palladium hydride, which is the most popular metal hydride, have been performed at 300, 150, and 44 K to investigate the positions of the hydrogen atoms in the face-centered cubic (fcc) lattice of palladium. We used high-quality PdD0.363 nanocrystals with a diameter of 8.0 ± 0.9 nm. The Rietveld analysis revealed that 30% of D atoms are located at the tetrahedral (T) sites and 70% at the octahedral (O) sites. In contrast, only the O sites are occupied in bulk palladium hydride and in most fcc metal hydrides. The temperature dependence of the T-site occupancy suggested that the T-sites are occupied only in a limited part, probably in the subsurface region, of the nanoparticles. This is the first study to determine the hydrogen sites in metal nanoparticles.

We have performed the heat capacity, neutron diffraction, and neutron quasielastic scattering measurements of an ionic liquid 1-octyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride (C8mimCl). The heat capacity data revealed that C8mimCl exhibits a glass transition with a large heat capacity jump at T(g) = 214 K, which is lower than T(g) of C4mimCl with a shorter alkyl-chain. In the neutron diffraction measurement for a deuterated analogue, d-C8mimCl, the peaks associated with the inter-domain, inter-ionic, and inter-alkyl-chain correlations appeared at (3, 11, and 14) nm(-1), respectively. The temperature dependence of these peaks indicates that the packing of the alkyl-chains becomes more compact and the domains become more vivid and larger as decreasing temperature. The quasielastic neutron scattering measurements using neutron spin echo and time-of-flight type instruments demonstrated that C8mimCl has faster relaxations probably owing to the alkyl-group and a slower relaxation owing to the ions. The latter relaxation, which is related to the glass transition, is of non-exponential as in the α relaxation of glass-forming molecular liquids. The relaxation of domains could not be observed in the present experiment but should have relaxation times longer than 100 ns. This is the first report to clarify temperature dependence of the hierarchical structure and relaxations simultaneously for a typical ionic liquid.