Measurement of electron beam polarization from unstrained GaAs via two-photon photoemission

Two-photon absorption of 1560 nm light was used to generate polarized electron beams from unstrained GaAs photocathodes of varying thickness: 625 μm, 0.32 μm, and 0.18 μm. For each photocathode, the degree of spin polarization of the photoemitted beam was less than 50%, contradicting earlier predictions based on simple quantum mechanical selection rules for spherically-symmetric systems but consistent with the more sophisticated model of Bhat et al. (Phys. Rev. B 71 (2005) 035209). Polarization via two-photon absorption was the highest from the thinnest photocathode sample and comparable to that obtained via one-photon absorption (using 778 nm light), with values 40.3±1.0% and 42.6±1.0%, respectively.