Electron Spin Density and Internal Conversion Process

Abstract

We have studied a possibility to explore the spin density of orbital electrons by utilizing the spin dependence of internal conversion processes. We have calculated the relative intensity of internal conversion electrons for the case where the radial wave functions of the orbital electrons are different for spin up and spin down. As a particular example, we have studied the internal conversion process in the decay of 14.4 keV level of Fe57, using the radial wave functions of the orbital electrons of Fe obtained in the unrestricted Hartree-Fock method which have a reasonable fit to the experimental data on the internal magnetic field. It is shown that the LI and MI conversion electrons distribute almost isotropically, and the intensity of conversion electrons should change by about 0.5 % for LI and 2 % for MI for different spin polarizations.