Pulsed neutron imaging based crystallographic structure study of a Japanese sword made by Sukemasa in the Muromachi period

Oikawa, Kenichi   ; Kiyanagi, Yoshiaki*; Sato, Hirotaka*; Omae, Kazuma*; Pham, A.*; Watanabe, Kenichi*; Matsumoto, Yoshihiro*; Shinohara, Takenao   ; Kai, Tetsuya   ; Harjo, S.   ; Onuma, Masato*; Morito, Shigekazu*; Oba, Takuya*; Uritani, Akira*; Ito, Masakazu*

Japanese swords are very attractive not only as a work of art but also a metallurgical point of view. Since Japanese vintage swords became valuable, it is indispensable to establish non-destructive analysis method to identify some peculiar characteristics. Bragg edge imaging gives real-space distributions of bulk information in a crystalline material as well as neutron tomography. In this work, we investigated crystallographic information of a Japanese sword made by Sukemasa in Izumi province in the first quarter of the 16th century. The experiments have been performed at RADEN at J-PARC. The Sukemasa sword was measured with a counting-type 2D detector and with a CCD camera. We are now analyzing the measured 2D-transmission spectra using RITS code to obtain spatial distribution of the crystallite size, the texture variation, the d110 shift and its broadening. Complementary data analysis using white beam tomography is also on going. Detailed analysis results will be presented.