Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Polarization Of Compton-Scattered Gamma Rays, James G. Hudson

Honors Theses

Intermediate energy photons (approximately 0.2 mev. to 10 mev.) interact with matter of low atomic number principally through a process called the Compton effect. This process is an inelastic collision of a photon with a free electron at rest. Using the principles of conservation of energy and conservation of momentum the energy of the scattered photon can be found in terms of the incident photon energy and the angle through which it is scattered. The energy of this scattered photon is then given by E¹=(E_O)/(1+α(1-cos θ)) where E_O is the energy of the incoming photon, …