Abstract
Upon a core level excitation by circularly polarized light (CPL), the angular momentum of light, i.e. helicity, is transferred to the emitted photoelectron. This phenomenon can be confirmed by the parallax shift measurement of the forward focusing peak (FFP) direction in a stereograph of the atomic arrangement. The angular momentum of the emitted photoelectron is the sum of CPL helicity and the magnetic quantum number (MQN) of the initial state that define the quantum number of the core hole final state. The core hole may decay via Auger electron emission, where in this two electron process the angular momentum has to be conserved as well. Starting from a given core hole, different Auger decay channels with different final state energies and angular momenta of the emitted Auger electrons may be populated. Here we report the observation and formulation of the angular momentum transfer of light to Auger electrons, instead of photoelectrons. We measured photoelectron and Auger electron intensity angular distributions from Cu(111) and Cu(001) surfaces as a function of photon energy and photoelectron kinetic energy. By combining Auger electron spectroscopy with the FFP shift measurements at absorption threshold, element- and MQN-specific hole states can be generated in the valence band.
Acknowledgement
This work was performed with the approval of the Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute (Proposals No. 2013B1307 and 2014B1454) and Paul Scherrer Institute. The authors deeply thank Mr. Rolf Wullschleger, Dr. Takayuki Muro, Dr. Tetsuya Nakamura, and Dr. Toyohiko Kinoshita for their support in the experiments. This research was supported by the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture, Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B), 25287075, 2013 and JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas “3D Active-Site Science”: 26105007 2604. The experiment at Switzerland was supported by the Foundation for Nara Institute of Science and Technology.
©2015 Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
