ABSTRACT
We report on a study of the polarization transfer between transversely polarized incident electrons and the emitted x rays for electron-atom bremsstrahlung. By means of Compton polarimetry we performed for the first time an energy-differential measurement of the complete properties of bremsstrahlung emission related to linear polarization, i.e., the degree of linear polarization as well as the orientation of the polarization axis. For the high-energy end of the bremsstrahlung continuum the experimental results for both observables show a high sensitivity on the initial electron spin polarization and prove that the polarization orientation is virtually independent of the photon energy.
ABSTRACT
Atomic-field bremsstrahlung has been studied with a longitudinally polarized electron beam. The correlation between the initial orientation of the electron spin and the angle of photon polarization has been measured at the photon high energy tip region. In the time reversal this corresponds to a so-far unobserved phenomenon of production of longitudinally polarized electrons by photoionization of unpolarized atoms with linearly polarized photons. The results confirm the fully relativistic calculations for radiative recombination and suggest a new method for electron beam polarimetry.
