Orbital and spin-polarization transfer in ionizing electron-atom collisions

Abstract

An experiment was performed in which a polarized electron beam ionized an orbitally oriented and/or spin-polarized valence electron of sodium. Measurements of cross section were done for well-resolved vector momenta of the two electrons in the final channel. A tensorial recoupling scheme was developed in order to study the transfer of the orbital orientation and initial spin from the electron-atom system to the final-state correlated electron pair. The cross section was seperated by this procedure into terms characterized by their specific rotational transformation properties, decoupling of geometrical effects and exchange and orbital angular momentum transfer effects were disentangled.