Abstract
It is shown that a specific beyond-dipole-approximation polarization effect in elastic photon-atom scattering, resulting in circular dichroism when the scattered photon has a suitable observed linear polarization, has significance in the x-ray regime. Ground-state atoms are considered, assumed to be randomly oriented. The cross section, given our assumptions, is written in terms of photon Stokes parameters and four real photon-polarization-independent atomic parameters (which depend on the vectors of the problem and the two invariant scattering amplitudes). Numerical results are given for the case of scattering from ground-state atoms with and Attention is given to determining the regime where the dichroism effect may be experimentally observable. An ideal experiment would involve measuring the difference between the cross sections for right-handed and left-handed circularly polarized incident photons, observing a fixed linear polarization for the scattered photon which makes an angle of with respect to the scattering plane. The effect is seen to be largest for intermediate angles, high Z and high (hundreds of keV) photon energies, increasing to an approximately 20% effect in cross sections. The parameter determining this effect is also responsible for the appearance of elliptically polarized scattered photons for the case of a suitable linearly polarized incident beam.
- Received 15 June 1999
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.61.032711
©2000 American Physical Society