Polarization of fluorescence radiation subsequent to inner-shell photoionization: LS-coupling formulas

Authors

• Anthony F. Starace, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

February 1982

Comments

Published by American Physical Society. Phys. Rev. A 25, 842 (1982). http://pra.aps.org. Copyright © 1982 American Physical Society. Permission to use.

Abstract

The polarization and angular distribution of fluorescence radiation subsequent to inner-shell photoionization in atoms are presented here in the important special case that dynamic amplitudes are calculated in LS coupling taking full account of anisotropic electron-ion interactions. The resulting formulas require for their evaluation no more dynamical information than is usually obtained in an LS-coupling calculation of the photoionization cross section. Exact geometrical relationships which are obscured in more general treatments become apparent in an LS-coupling formulation. Thus it is shown that in LS coupling the fluorescence resulting from photoionization of an s subshell in an atom having an initial orbital angular momentum L₀=0 has an analytically known constant polarization. Analytic predictions for the linear polarization of fluorescence radiation resulting from ionization of atoms with L₀=0 by unpolarized light are given and illustrated explicitly for nitrogenlike atoms. Experimental measurements of fluorescence polarizations which deviate from these theoretically exact predictions in LS coupling are thus a sensitive probe of relativistic and certain weak electron correlation interactions.