Information for POWGEN Users

Powder Diffractometer

POWGEN | BL-11A | SNS

Announcements

We are excited to announce the addition of a new sample environment for the 2025-A cycle: a vanadium-tail magnet with a temperature range of 2 K to 300 K and a maximum magnetic field of 7 T. This magnet provides clean neutron diffraction patterns without contamination from aluminum peaks.

Useful Links for POWGEN Users

POWGEN Experiment Guide: A–Z
POWGEN Hutch Poster
POWGEN Mail In Program Guide
POWGEN Monitor Webpage
POWGEN Rebuild paper Journal of Applied Crystallography, 52, 1189-1201 (2019)
POWGEN Original paper Zeitschrift fur Kristallographie, 1, 127-135 (2011)
POWGEN User Manual for Data Acquisition
POWGEN User Manual for Mantid Workbench

Shipping Addresses for Samples

Please visit the ORNL User Facilities Sample Handling and Shipping page.

Quick Start Guides for Sample Changes and Shutter Operation

Data Reduction and Analysis by Run Cycle

Parameter files for GSAS-II, FullProf, Jana and TOPAS can be downloaded from the table below. Be sure to pick the correct cycle. These files are also stored in the /SNS/PG3/run_cycle_11A_CAL folder in the analysis computer where cycle is year_1 or year_2 based on cycle A or B.

Data will be automatically reduced into the following formats:

Extension .gsa for GSAS-II: Files are numbered with banks which correspond to the wavelength used. Please use the corresponding bank # from the parameter files for refinements.
Extension .dat for FullProf and Jana: The data file names themselves tell you which bank they are and the same bank IRF file should be used for FullProf.
Extension .xye for TOPAS: Please refer to the TOPAS example below.

Dates	Run Numbers	GSAS-II	FullProf	Jana	TOPAS	PDF
2024 June - November	56309 -	GSAS-II_2024_HR	FullProf_2024	JANA_2024B	TOPAS_2024
2023 June - August	55221 - 56308	GSAS-II_2023_HR	FullProf_2023	Jana_2023	TOPAS_2023	PDF_2023
2022 Nov - Feb 2023	53957 - 55220	GSAS-II_2022B_HR	FullProf_2022B	Jana_2022B	TOPAS_2022B
2022 January - August	51648 - 53956	GSAS-II_2022A_HR	FullProf_2022A	Jana_2022A_HR	TOPAS_2022A	PDF_2022A
2021 July - October	50286 - 51647	GSAS-II_2021B_HR_v2	FullProf_2021B_HR		TOPAS_2021B_HR	PDF_2021B
2021 February - June	48322 - 50285	GSASII_2021_HR_v2	FullProf_2021A		TOPAS_2021A_HR	PDF_2021A
2020 May - November	46137 - 48321	GSASII_2020A-may_HR	FullProf_2020A-may_HR		TOPAS_2020B	PDF_2020A-may
2020 January - February	45453 - 46136	GSASII_2020A	FullProf_2020A_HR		TOPAS_2020A	PDF_2020A

Data Analysis Tutorials

How to access POWGEN data

Step by step instructions are also provided in the document POWGEN_Data_Access_User_Manual.

Create an ORNL Resource account (if you don’t already have one) at the ORNL Guest Portal.
Once you have an account, you can login to our analysis cluster by clicking on Launch Session at https://analysis.sns.gov. Alternatively, you may install the ThinLinc client on your local machine.
Once you login, under your home directory you will see the following folder structure /data/SNS/PG3/IPTS-#/. All the run numbers will appear for your data. (Alternatively, you can find your data in /SNS/PG3/IPTS-#/shared/autoreduce.) Your automatically reduced data can be found in the /shared/autoreduce folder, along with a summary file called PG3_IPTS-xxxxx_runsummary.csv.
Secure ftp or secure shell (SSH) will allow you to copy the data to your local drive. Select one of the programs below to download and install: FileZilla or Cyberduck.
Enter the following information to connect to the analysis computers:
Host: analysis.sns.gov
Your username and password
Port: 22

Synchrotron Partnership

POWGEN has a partnership with beam line 11BM at the Advanced Photon Source where users can get x-ray data if they have an approved proposal at POWGEN. This option is not available for mail in proposals.