Failure to observe electron circular dichroism in camphor

Abstract

Analogous to optical circular dichroism, it is possible to have electron circular dichroism, the preferential transmission of longitudinally polarized electrons through a chiral medium. Using stereoisomers of camphor vapor as a scattering target, we looked for this effect at incident electron energies of 1, 3, 5, 7, or 10 eV. Within our detection limit (~0.02%) we have not observed a spin-dependent asymmetric transmission.

Electron-Collision-Induced Alignment of Rare Gases near Threshold

“…While they both have their excited-electron orbital angular momentum, their excitedelectron spins, and j c "lined up" to give the maximal J for the state, the 3 D 3 state has an alignable ( j c 3͞2) core while the 3 P 2 state does not ( j c 1͞2). The tendency of the atomic 3 D 3 alignment to remain high well above threshold has thus in the past been interpreted in terms of an alignment "flywheel" model [7,20]: the "storage" of alignment in the 3 D 3 core could reduce both the depolarizing influence of negative-ion decay and the ordinary fall of P 1 from its threshold value as sublevels with M L . 0 begin to be excited.…”

New technique for the reduction of helicity-correlated instrumental asymmetries in photoemitted beams of spin-polarized electrons

“…Beams of spin-polarized electrons [1] are used in, e.g., high-energy nuclear physics to study parity violation [2][3][4], in condensed matter physics to study the morphology of magnetic domains [5], and in molecular physics to study chiral sensitivity in electron-molecule collisions [6][7][8]. The standard method used to produce polarized electrons is laserinduced photoemission from a negative electron affinity (NEA) GaAs crystal [9].…”