Directional correlation between photoelectrons and Auger electrons

Abstract

It is argued that, in a process involving ejection of an inner shell electron by an unpolarized beam of photons and subsequent atomic reorganization via Auger ejection, the two ejected electrons can be strongly correlated in direction. In general, the detailed form of the correlation will depend on both photoionization and Auger transition amplitudes. However, for the important special case where the Auger electron can be represented by a single partial wave, the form of the correlation depends only on parameters governing the photoprocess. For such a case, Auger asymmetry parameters beta ( theta ), where theta denotes the polar angle of the photoejected electron, are predicted using theoretical data of Burgess (1964) and McGuire (1970). It is shown that beta ( theta ) may attain large values and be sensitive to the theoretical parameters. Hence a coincidence experiment designed to measure beta ( theta ) is proposed.