Electron Beam Polarimetry

Along with its well known charge and mass, the electron also carries an intrinsic angular momentum, or spin. The rules of quantum mechanics allow us to measure only the probability that the electron spin is in one of two allowed spin states. When a beam carries a net excess of electrons in one of these two allowed spin states, the beam is said to be polarized. The beam polarization may be measured by observing a sufficient number of electrons scattered by a spin-dependent interaction. For electrons, the useful scattering processes involve Coulomb scattering by heavy nuclei, or scattering from either polarized photons or other polarized electrons (known as Mott, Compton, and Møller scattering, respectively). In this tutorial, we will briefly review how beam polarization is measured through a general scattering process, followed by a discussion of how the three scattering processes above are used to measure electron beam polarization. Descriptions of electron polarimeters based on the three scattering processes will be given.