Heidelberg 2015 – scientific programme
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A: Fachverband Atomphysik
A 26: Poster: Collisions, scattering and recombination
A 26.6: Poster
Wednesday, March 25, 2015, 17:00–19:00, C/Foyer
Strong correlation between the electron spin orientation and bremsstrahlung linear polarization observed in the relativistic regime — •Oleksiy Kovtun1, Valeriy Tioukine2, Andrey Surzhikov3, Vladimir Yerokhin4, Anton Khaplanov5, Bo Cederwall5, and Stanislav Tashenov1 — 1Physikalisches Institut der Universität Heidelberg, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany — 2Institut für Kernphysik Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Germany — 3Helmholtz-Institut Jena, 07743 Jena, Germany — 4Center for Advanced Studies, St. Petersburg State Polytechnical University, St. Petersburg 195251, Russia — 5Royal Institute of Technology, SE-10691 Stockholm, Sweden
Polarization of bremsstrahlung produced in collisions of 2MeV electrons with a thin gold foil was studied using a polarized electron beam and the Compton polarimetry technique. A strong correlation between the spin orientation of the incoming electrons and the linear polarization of the emitted x-rays was observed at the high energy part of the x-ray spectrum. For longitudinally polarized electrons the plane of the x-ray linear polarization was tilted by several tens of degrees depending on the electron spin orientation. We attribute this effect to the precession of electron spin and orbital momentum in the magnetic field, which is induced in the rest frame of the electron by the moving nucleus. In comparison to an earlier experiment performed with 100 keV electrons, which observed a similar but much smaller effect, the significantly enhanced polarization correlation indicates a much stronger spin-orbit interaction at higher collision energies.