Photoemission secondary-electron energy distributions and yield measurements for (100) EuO show that "quasielastic" rather than inelastic electron scattering dominates the photoemission escape process for electrons excited within a few eV of threshold. In this "quasielastic" scattering regime (with a large effective escape depth ∼ 50-100 Å), it is suggested that the spin polarization need not be conserved in the photoemission escape process, and that reported "paramagnetic" spin-polarized photoemission at 10 °K is possibly due to quasielastic spin-flip scattering.

• Received 18 April 1973

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.8.6027