Dresden 2011 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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A: Fachverband Atomphysik

A 26: Poster III

A 26.54: Poster

Donnerstag, 17. März 2011, 16:00–18:30, P2

Direct Determination of the Magnetic Quadrupole Contribution to the Lyman-α₁ Transition in a Hydrogen-like Ion — •Günter Weber^1,2,3, Harald Bräuning¹, Andrey Surzhykov^1,3, Stephan Fritzsche^1,4, Siegbert Hagmann¹, Renate Märtin^1,3, Regina Reuschl¹, Uwe Spillmann¹, Sergiy Trotsenko^1,2, Danyal Winters¹, and Thomas Stöhlker^1,2,3 — ¹GSI, Darmstadt, Germany — ²Helmholtz-Institut Jena, Germany — ³Physikalisches Institut, Universität Heidelberg, Germany — ⁴Department of Physics, University of Oulu, Finland

By applying novel-type position sensitive x-ray detectors as Compton polarimeters we performed the first linear polarization measurement of the Lyman-α₁ radiation (2p_3/2 -> 1s_1/2) in a high-Z system, namely in U⁹¹⁺. Here, we observed an interference between the electric-dipole (E1) and the magnetic-quadrupole (M2) tranistion amplitudes leading to a significant depolarization of the Lyman-α₁ radiation. In the present work, we show that a combined measurement of the linear polarization and of the angular distribution enables a very precise determination of the ratio of the E1 and the M2 amplitudes and the corresponding transition rates without any assumptions concerning the population mechanism for the excited 2p_3/2 state. This finding opens a new route to disentangle the population process of the excited ionic state from the subsequent decay properties. The accuracy of the obtained amplitude ratio will stimulate more detailed quantum-electrodynamical investigations on the transition amplitudes of highly-charged ions beyond Dirac’s theory.