Spin Polarization in Normal Photoemission by Linearly Polarized Light from Nonmagnetic (001) Surfaces

Abstract

Photoelectrons emitted normal to (001) surfaces of nonmagnetic centrosymmetric cubic crystals by off-normally incident linearly and unpolarized light are spin polarized. From symmetry, the polarization is perpendicular to the incidence plane and its size has no azimuthal dependence. As is seen analytically, the effect is due to the spin-orbit-induced hybridization of basis functions of different spatial symmetry types. Relativistic one-step-model multiple scattering calculations for Pt(001) and Pd(001) predict large polarization features depending sensitively on the top layer spacing.