Determination of Polarization of Vacuum-Ultraviolet Radiation by Fluorescence and Probe-Beam Techniques

Abstract

Polarization analysis of vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) radiation, especially the analysis of elliptical polarization is of considerable scientific interest in many areas of physics including solar physics. Polarization measurements in the VUV region are much less developed than those in visible and infrared spectral regions. It is due to lack of efficient phase shifting elements and small reflection coefficients of polarizers for VUV radiation. We propose two techniques, to determine the arbitrary polarization of VUV radiation with photon energies in the range 10 – 100 eV, which seem to be more efficient and precise than the known techniques, especially to study the polarization of atomic or molecular spectral lines.