ANDiE the Autonomous Neutron Diffraction Explorer

Abstract

We developed the Autonomous Neutron Diffraction Explorer (ANDiE) to autonomously perform neutron diffraction measurements to discover the magnetic ordering behavior in a material [ 1 ]. Neutron diffraction is one of the few techniques that can directly probe the magnetic ordering of the atoms in a material. As such beamtime at neutron diffraction facilities is in high demand. ANDiE is able to increase the measurement efficiency for discovering the magnetic order parameter and ordering behavior by a factor of about 5, thus making efficient use of the beamtime. The experiments to discover the magnetic order parameter and ordering behavior involve measuring the neutron diffraction patterns at many temperatures. Con-ventionally these measurements are scheduled ad hoc and take a significant amount of beamtime to perform. ANDiE, by contrast, uses Bayesian inference to determine the most informative temperatures at which to acquire diffraction patterns. ANDiE analyzes the powder neutron diffraction patterns, infers the temperature dependence, chooses the next temperature,