Response to “Comment on ‘Elastic incoherent neutron scattering operating by varying instrumental energy resolution: Principle, simulations, and experiments of the resolution elastic neutron scattering (RENS)’” [Rev. Sci. Instrum. 83, 107101 (2012)

Abstract

Recently [S. Magazù et al., Rev. Sci. Instrum. 82, 105115 (2011)10.1063/1.3641870] we have proposed a new method for characterizing, by neutron scattering, the dynamical properties of complex material systems, such as, the ones of interest in the biophysical field. This approach called Resolution Elastic Neutron Scattering, in short RENS, is based on the detection of the elastically scattered neutron intensity as a function of the instrumental energy resolution. By experimental, theoretical, and numerical findings, we have pointed out that an inflection point occurs in the elastic intensity when the system relaxation time approaches the instrumental energy resolution time. This approach, differently from quasi-elastic neutron scattering (QENS), gives the chance to evaluate the system relaxation times without using pre-defined models that can be wrong and/or misleading. Here, we reply to a Comment on the above-mentioned main paper in which Wuttke proposes a different approach to evaluate the above-mentioned inflection point; on this regard, it should be noticed that the existence of the inflection point, which is the main topic of our work, is not questioned and that the approach proposed by Wuttke in the Comment, although valid for a class of dynamical processes, is not applicable when different and distinct processes occur simultaneously at different time scale.