Modern, nonlinear ballistic neutron guides are an attractive concept in
neutron beam delivery and instrumentation, because they offer increased
performance over straight or linearly tapered guides. However, like other
ballistic geometries they have the potential to create significantly
non-trivial instrumental resolution functions. We address the source of the
most prominent optical aberration, namely coma, and we show that for extended
sources the off-axis rays have a different focal length from on-axis rays,
leading to multiple reflections in the guide system. We illustrate how the
interplay between coma, sources of finite size, and mirrors with non-perfect
reflectivity can therefore conspire to produce uneven distributions in the
neutron beam divergence, the source of complicated resolution functions. To
solve these problems, we propose a hybrid elliptic-parabolic guide geometry.
Using this new kind of neutron guide shape, it is possible to condition the
neutron beam and remove almost all of the aberrations, whilst providing the
same performance in beam current as a standard elliptic neutron guide. We
highlight the positive implications for a number of neutron scattering
instrument types that this new shape can bring.Comment: Presented at NOP2010 Conference in Alpe d'Huez, France, in March 201