Development of a graphite polarization analyzer for resonant inelastic x-ray scattering

Resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) is a powerful technique for studying electronic excitations in correlated electron systems. Current RIXS spectrometers measure the changes in energy and momentum of the photons scattered by the sample. A powerful extension of the RIXS technique is the measurement of the polarization state of the scattered photons which contains information about the symmetry of the excitations. This long-desired addition has been elusive because of significant technical challenges. This paper reports the development of a new diffraction-based polarization analyzer which discriminates between linear polarization components of the scattered photons. The double concave surface of the polarization analyzer was designed as a good compromise between energy resolution and throughput. Such a device was fabricated using highly oriented pyrolytic graphite for measurements at the Cu K-edge incident energy. Preliminary measurements on a CuGeO(3) sample are presented.