Karl Ahrendsen will defend his thesis, “Asymmetry in Secondary Electron Emission from Collisions of Longitudinally-Polarized Electrons with Solid Cysteine” in-person.

Abstract: In this talk I will report the most recent advances in the development of a novel source of spin-polarized electrons: the Rb Spin Filter. Polarized electron beams are produced by driving an unpolarized beam of thermionically emitted electrons through a target cell containing a mixture of spin-polarized Rb vapor at 1/3 mTorr and N2 at 400 mTorr. The Spin filter produces beams of spin polarized electrons at relatively high pressures when compared to standard GaAs sources. The apparatus has been updated to include a target chamber for our continuing studies of asymmetries in the interaction between longitudinally spin-polarized electrons and chiral molecules. I will describe the first experiments conducted using this apparatus to search for an asymmetry in secondary electron emission from a solid cysteine surface. These investigations found no asymmetry to a level of 10^{-3}.