Düsseldorf 2007 – scientific programme
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A: Fachverband Atomphysik
A 28: Collisions with electrons and ions (jointly with MO)
A 28.2: Talk
Friday, March 23, 2007, 11:00–11:15, 5M
Photon angular distribution and nuclear-state alignment in nuclear excitation by electron capture — •Adriana Pálffy1, Zoltán Harman1, Andrey Surzhykov1, Ulrich D. Jentschura1, and Werner Scheid2 — 1Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, Heidelberg — 2Institut für Theoretische Physik, Giessen
We investigate the resonant process of nuclear excitation by electron capture (NEEC), in which a free electron is captured into a bound atomic shell with the simultaneous excitation of the nucleus. Partly due to the radiative recombination (RR) background, NEEC has not been observed experimentally yet. In Ref. [1,2] total cross sections for NEEC followed by the radiative decay of the nucleus are presented. The measurement of the angular distribution of the emitted photons in the recombination process offers an useful method of discerning NEEC from RR. With the help of a density matrix formalism the angular distribution of the photons emitted in the radiative decay of the nucleus is derived. We present the anisotropy parameters and the angular distribution of the photons emitted in a radiative E2 decay of the nuclear state for the capture of the electron into the K shell of several bare ions. The angular pattern of the photon emission for NEEC can serve as a signature for the occurrence of the process.
[1] A. Palffy, W. Scheid and Z. Harman, Phys. Rev. A 73, 012715 (2006)
[2] A. Palffy, Z. Harman and W. Scheid, Phys. Rev. A 74, in press (2006)