Polarisation of electric field quench radiation from He+(2S) ions

Abstract

The polarisation fraction of 304 Á photons produced by an 0.1-1 kV cm-1 electric field (Stark) quenching of metastable He+(2S) ions has been measured. A gold reflecting polariser was used to determine the degree of polarisation. An analytical equation was derived for the mirror polarimeter and computer fitted to the experimental data to obtain the relevant intensities. For the range of field considered the averaged P value obtained from the experiment was -0.258 ±0.004, slightly higher than the -0.267 value from a calculation by Sellin et al.