Nuclear resonant scattering of synchrotron radiation

Authors(s):G.V. Smirnov Publication:Hyperfine Interactions Publication Date:1996 Publisher: Citation:HyperfineInteractions97/98 (1996)551-588 Link:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF02150198

The principal ideas of the theory and the main results of the experimental studies of the coherent resonant scattering ofγ-radiation by nuclear ensembles in matter are briefly over-viewed. An analysis of transmission of the Mössbauerγ-radiation and of synchrotron radiation through a nuclear resonant medium is suggested using an approach based on the optical theory. The feasibilities of the nuclear resonant scattering of synchrotron radiation as a new technique for studying the hyperfine interactions and some other phenomena of the physics of condensed matter are considered.

In 1974, Ruby [27 ] suggested that synchrotron radiation (SR) could be used for exciting nuclei (nuclear resonant fluorescence excited by the bremsstralung X-radiation was first observed by Seppi and Boehem [28]). In 1978, there was an attempt of Cohen et al. [29] to detect the nuclear excitations of 57Fe nuclei created by synchrotron X-rays, and in 1983 Chechin et al. [30] attempted to filter the coherent response of nuclei to SR pulsed excitation using the pure nuclear diffraction, but it was not until 1985 that Gerdau et al. [31] made the first unambiguous observations of synchrotron X-rays resonantly scattered by 57Fe nuclei. Since that pioneering work, many nuclear resonance fluorescence experiments have followed (see the reviews by Gerdau et al. [32], by Arthur et al. [33], by Riiffer [34], by Gerdau and van Biirck [35], see also section 3 of this paper).