Using Java to visualize and manipulate large arrays of neutron scattering data

The Intense Pulsed Neutron Source at Argonne National Laboratory is a world class pulsed neutron source with thirteen instruments designed to characterize materials using time-of-flight neutron scattering techniques. For each instrument, a collimated pulse of neutrons is directed to a material sample. The neutrons are scattered by the sample and detected by arrays of detectors. The type, number and arrangement of detectors vary widely from instrument to instrument, depending on which properties of materials are being studied. In all cases, the faster, higher energy neutrons reach the detectors sooner than the lower energy neutrons. This produces a time-of-flight spectrum at each detector element. The time-of-flight spectrum produced by each detector element records the scattering intensity at hundreds to thousands of discrete time intervals. Since there are typically between two hundred and ten thousand distinct detector elements, a single set of raw data can include millions of points. Often many such datasets are collected for a single sample to determine the effect of different conditions on the microscopic structure and dynamics of the sample. In this project, Java was used to construct a portable highly interactive system for viewing and operating on large collections of time-of-flight spectra. Java performed surprisingly well in handling large amounts of data quickly was fast enough even with standard PC hardware. Although Java may not be the choice at this time for applications where computational efficiency is the primary refinement, any disadvantages in this case were outweighed by the advantages of a clean object oriented language with a portable set of GUI components. The authors anticipate that Java will prove useful for scientific computing and data visualization in situations where portability, case of use and effective use of software development manpower are critical