Production of Purely Spin-Aligned Autoionizing States Which Decay to Orbital-Aligned Ionic States

Abstract

In violation of the Wigner spin-conservation rule, purely spin-aligned, doubly excited ${3p}^{4}{[}^{3}P]4p{(}^{2}S)$ $\mathrm{ns}$ autoionizing states have been produced during the photoionization of argon with linearly polarized radiation. Upon autoionization this spin alignment is transformed into orbital alignment, inferred from the polarized fluorescence from doublet ${3p}^{4}4p$ ionic states. We show that this orbital alignment is equally partitioned between the ${3p}^{4}$ subshell and $4p$ valence electron.