https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2015-60071-2
Regular Article
Circular polarization of the Lyman-α1 line radiation emitted by longitudinally-polarized electron impact excitation: effects of Breit interaction and radiation multipoles
College of Science, National University of Defense
Technology, Changsha, Hunan
410073, P.R.
China
a
e-mail: chenzb008@qq.com
b
e-mail: jlzeng@nudt.edu.cn
Received:
4
February
2015
Received in final form:
23
March
2015
Published online:
4
June
2015
Detailed calculations are carried out for the longitudinally-polarized electron impact excitation cross sections from the ground state 1s1/2 to the individual magnetic sublevels of the excited state 2p3/2 of highly charged H-like ions using a fully relativistic distorted-wave method. The influence of the Breit interaction and radiation multipoles on the circular polarization of X-ray radiation are investigated systematically. Our results show that the Breit interaction, as the dominant correction to the Coulomb interaction, may lead to a considerable change in the magnetic sublevels cross sections and circular polarizations of Lyman-α1 (2p3/2 → 1s1/2) line radiation with a more pronounced effect at higher incident energies and/or atomic numbers. Moreover, the interference between the electric dipole (E1) decay and the magnetic quadrupole (M2) decay may significantly alter the circular polarizations of the emitted X-rays. The circular polarizations of the Lyman-α1 line are exhibit a different behavior than the linear polarizations for the same transition line regarding the radiative electron capture [Weber et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 243002 (2010)], radiative recombination [Bettadj et al., J. Phys. B 47, 105205 (2014)], and electron-impact excitation processes [Chen et al., Phys. Rev. A. 90, 012703 (2014)].
Key words: Atomic and Molecular Collisions
© EDP Sciences, Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag 2015