Compton double ionization of the helium atom: Can it be a method of dynamical spectroscopy of ground state electron correlation?

Abstract

Recent experiments on single and double ionization of atoms by Compton scattering potentially open the door to establishing new methods of dynamical spectroscopy complementing the well-known methods like (e,2e) and (e,3e) spectroscopy. In this paper we explore the possibility to use double ionization of the helium atom by Compton scattering as a tool for direct spectroscopy of electron-electron correlations. For rather high photon energies of a few dozens of keV, a non-relativistic theoretical description of the process and the Kramers-Heisenberg-Waller approximation can be consistently used with a high computational efficiency.