Note: One order of magnitude better signal-to-noise ratio for neutron backscattering.

We report on a new achievement which allows increasing the signal-to-noise ratio of reactor backscattering spectrometers by more than one order of magnitude by sacrificing at most 50% of the count rate. This method was recently tested on the backscattering instrument IN16B at ILL, where signal-to-noise ratios of more than 10 000 for standard samples and up to 40 000 for strong scatterers were measured with only 37% reduction in intensity. The described method is applicable at any reactor backscattering spectrometer equipped with a so-called background chopper which can optionally function as a pulse suppression chopper and presents a major advancement for high energy resolution spectroscopy with neutrons.