Angular distribution of photoelectrons from polarized X-rays

Abstract

The general form of the angular distribution of the photoelectrons ejected by linearly polarized radiation is presented which includes the contributions of all multipoles of the ionizing radiation. Explicit results for photon energies less than 3 keV are presented calculated on the basis of the independent particle relativistic Hartree-Slater theory. It is found that for energies as low as 500 eV, ten percent asymmetries can be expected from the multipoles beyond the electric dipole approximation. In general, for photon energies less than 3 keV, three energy-dependent parameters are sufficient to describe the angular distribution. For some ranges of atomic numbers, a few subshells have 5 percent contributions from two additional parameters.