2025/06/01 by Keting Chen, Chen, Kaijie, Xiangfei Wang +27
Physics and Astronomy · #Nuclear Physics and Applications #Advanced X-ray Imaging Techniques #Crystallography and Radiation Phenomena
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2506.00767
The interaction of photons with relativistic electrons constitutes a fundamental electromagnetic process whose polarization transfer mechanics remain incompletely characterized. We report the first systematic measurement of spatial polarization distribution for γ-rays generated via \SI45° slant inverse Compton scattering (ICS) between linearly polarized \SI0.117\eV photons and \SI3.5\GeV electrons, performing full 2D mapping of intensity, polarization angle (AOP), and degree of polarization (DOP). Measurements reveal an asymmetric beam profile along the laser's polarization direction that resembles \SI180° backward ICS observations. The central beam region exhibits DOP ≈ 1.0 with AOP rigidly aligned at \SI45°, while peripheral regions display complex non-uniform polarization distributions. These findings confirm quantum electrodynamics predictions of near-complete polarization transfer along the beam axis in slant geometries, thus establishing slant scattering as a viable alternative to head-on configurations for generating high DOP γ-rays.