INSTITUTE OF PHYSICS PUBLISHING JOURNAL OF PHYSICS B: ATOMIC, MOLECULAR AND OPTICAL PHYSICS J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 36 (2003) 3337–3347 PII: S0953-4075(03)62959-7 Spin polarization transfer in the resonant Auger decay following Kr 3d -1 5p photoexcitation M Drescher 1 , T Khalil 1 ,NM¨ uller 1 , S Fritzsche 2 , N M Kabachnik 3,4 and U Heinzmann 1 1 Fakult¨ at f¨ ur Physik, Universit¨ at Bielefeld, 33615 Bielefeld, Germany 2 Fachbereich Physik, Universit¨ at Kassel, 34132 Kassel, Germany 3 Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, 14195 Berlin, Germany 4 Institute of Nuclear Physics, Moscow State University, Moscow 119992, Russia Received 29 April 2003 Published 18 July 2003 Online at stacks.iop.org/JPhysB/36/3337 Abstract Spin polarization of the resonant Auger electrons is measured following the decay of Kr 3d -1 5p states resonantly excited by circularly polarized light. A large polarization transfer is found in particular for all strong transitions to the 4s -1 4p -1 5p and 4s -2 5p states. The experimental results are in excellent agreement with calculations carried out by means of the multiconfiguration Dirac–Fock method. 1. Introduction The electron spin polarization often carries important information about the dynamics of the photo- and/or Auger electron emission from atoms. Although, in general, the spin polarization of the electrons is more difficult to access than their intensity, it has recently been shown that the electron polarization may reveal rather subtle phenomena like non-dipole contributions in the near-threshold Xe 4p photoionization (Khalil et al 2002). The spin polarization of the Auger electrons has been measured towards a so-called complete experiment for the Auger process where all the Auger amplitudes and their relative phases are to be determined experimentally (Hergenhahn et al 1999, Schmidtke et al 2000, 2001). Experimental progress in electron analysis has been accompanied and stimulated by ever more refined theoretical models for photoionization and Auger decay. A particular challenge is put to the theory by Auger decay following the resonant excitation of core electrons into Rydberg states, because a full description of the possible energy transfer mechanisms between the outgoing Auger electron and the weakly bound outer electrons requires the consideration of many electronic configurations. Therefore, one of the objectives of this work is to study to what extent the theory is capable of predicting and explaining the spin polarization transfer to the Auger electrons following the resonant excitation of a core electron to Rydberg states with circularly polarized photons. To this end, a precision measurement of the spin polarization component P trans parallel to the photon spin was performed for the resonant Kr 3d -1 5p Auger decay. In more 0953-4075/03/153337+11$30.00 © 2003 IOP Publishing Ltd Printed in the UK 3337