Structured Waves: From Matter to Light

Neutrons are important probes of mater and quantum physics. They are particularly powerful at characterizing magnetic structures. In order to extend the applications of neutron physics as a quantum probes/sensors we have developed methods based on Quantum Information Processing for preparing structured waves such asorbital and spin-orbit states of neutrons. Such states may beprepared for the beam as a whole, or with reference to the coherencelength of the neutron wavepacket, which is much smaller than thewidth of useful beams. I will describe experiments to prepare andcharacterize neutron beams with specific orbital and spin-orbitstructure based on neutron interferometry and will show how we canapply these methods to other type of probes such as light.