About the School

The Budapest neutron school was one of the first to offer – besides theoretical lectures – also hands-on-training on real working neutron spectrometers. The first such event was held in 1998 as an Austro-Hungarian training course. A widely opened international school was first organised on the occasion of the 2nd European Conference on Neutron Scattering in 1999.

Since 2001 we have decided to extend the school into a training course, and offer the hands-on-training possibilities of the cold and thermal neutron beam instruments at BNC for the international user community. In this way our school has become a regular event, and it has got the name CETS – Central European Training School, to respond indeed, to the situation that most of the students are coming from our neighbour countries. In the past 20 years over 500 young scientists from nearly 40 countries have been trained at CETS.

In 2017 we decided to introduce a new structure of the usual one-week programme: instead of mixing lectures and instrumental training, now the lectures are condensed for the first two days, which is followed by the experimental part with extended exercises on the selected instruments. In this way, CETS now provides in a didactic way, insight into the basics of neutron physics and the experimental procedures. The lectures cover the commonly used beam techniques: diffraction, radiography, reflectometry, three-axis spectroscopy, small-angle scattering, prompt gamma activation analysis, time-of-flight techniques and neutron polarisation.

Budapest Research Reactor building
Budapest Research Reactor hall

Theoretical Lectures

Theoretical lectures will be given by experts of the discussed topics. Lectures from CETS 2021 are available here.

The following topics will be discussed:

Hands-on Training

Due to the space available at the neutron instruments, the number of the participants at the hands-on training is limited to 25. Selection is made on the basis of the submitted abstract and interest in using neutron methods for the applicant’s own research project.

The participants will be divided into groups of a maximum of 5 students in order to facilitate individual involvement in the performance of the experiments. Each group will perform one or two neutron experiments per day and each group will work at 5 different instruments.

Available instruments:

Flash Presentations and Posters

During the first day of the training, a dedicated poster and flash presentation session will be held, where the participants will be asked to present their own research topic (5-minute presentations in English, max. 5 slides). The posters will give further opportunity to discuss their interest in neutron scattering experiments with the local and invited experts.

The required poster size is A0 (841 mm x 1189 mm), portrait.

Registration fee

A registration fee of 100 EUR will be charged from the participants for the meals and the printed course material of the practices. A few grants will be available for students. Further details about the bank transfer payment of the registration fee will be sent to successful applicants via e-mail.

Travel and accommodation expenses cannot be reimbursed.

Abstract Volume

Click on the icon to open the CETS 2023 Abstract Volume
© 2023 Central European Training School on Neutron Techniques