High precision measurement of undulator polarization in the regime of hard x-rays

Abstract

We have measured the polarization purity of undulator radiation at 12.9 keV, with hitherto unachievable precision. We could measure a polarization purity of 1.8 × 10−4 by using a silicon channel-cut crystal with six Bragg reflections at 45° as analyzer.

High purity x-ray polarimetry with single-crystal diamonds

“…In the x-ray regime, applications based on polarization effects are becoming increasingly significant and make use of the high degree of polarization provided by synchrotron or free-electron laser (FEL) sources. [1][2][3] One prominent example is x-ray magnetic circular dichroism. 4 More recently, the development of high-performance x-ray polarizers for crossed polarizer/analyzer setups expanded the applications of nuclear resonant scattering 5 and even enabled the detection of optical activity of sugar at a photon energy of 12.9 keV.…”