Angular distribution and polarization of characteristic x-ray lines following innershell photoionization of tungsten by linearly polarized light

Abstract The innershell 2p3/2 photoionization of tungsten by linearly polarized light has been investigated, together with the subsequent Lα1 (3d5/2 → 2p3/2) and Lα2 (3d3/2 → 2p3/2) radiative decays. In particular, a specific density matrix formalism is presented for the photoionization and decay process to explore how the linear polarization of the incident ionizing light influences the photoionization process as well as the angular and polarization properties of the emitted characteristic Lα1, 2 photons. Detailed calculations show that the alignment parameter A 20 of the 2p3/2 hole state is independent of the polarization of the ionizing photons, while the parameters A 2 ± 2 behave proportional to the polarization. It is found that the Lα1, 2 characteristic lines become stronger polarized for linearly polarized incident light with the degree P = − 1 , when compared with the results in Ref. [Phys. Rev. A 93, 033409 (2016)] for initially unpolarized light, while the characteristic lines become unpolarized for P = 1 . It is also found that the Lα1, 2 angular distributions are isotropic for the case of P = − 1 , while they become anisotropic for P = 0 and 1.