Polarization transfer of bremsstrahlung arising from spin-polarized electrons.

We report on a study of the polarization transfer between transversely polarized incident electrons and the emitted x rays for electron-atom bremsstrahlung. By means of Compton polarimetry we performed for the first time an energy-differential measurement of the complete properties of bremsstrahlung emission related to linear polarization, i.e.

Measurement of the correlation between electron spin and photon linear polarization in atomic-field bremsstrahlung.

Atomic-field bremsstrahlung has been studied with a longitudinally polarized electron beam. The correlation between the initial orientation of the electron spin and the angle of photon polarization has been measured at the photon high energy tip region. In the time reversal this corresponds to a so-far unobserved phenomenon of production of longitudinally polarized electrons by photoionization of unpolarized atoms with linearly polarized photons.