Neutron and X-ray reflectometry are powerful techniques facilitating the study of the structure of interfacial materials. The analysis of these techniques is ill-posed in nature requiring the application of a model-dependent methods. This can lead to the over- and under- analysis of experimental data, when too many or too few parameters are allowed to vary in the model. In this work, we outline a robust and generic framework for the determination of the set of free parameters that is capable of maximising the in-formation density of the model. This framework involves the determination of the Bayesian evidence for each permutation of free parameters; and is applied to a simple phospholipid monolayer. We believe this framework should become an important component in reflectometry data analysis, and hope others more regularly consider the relative evidence for their analytical models.
@article{arxiv.1910.10581,
title = {A general approach to maximise information density in neutron reflectometry analysis},
author = {Andrew R. McCluskey and Thomas Arnold and Joshaniel F. K. Cooper and Tim Snow},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1910.10581},
year = {2022}
}