Out-of-plane (e, 2e) experiments on helium L=0, 1, 2 autoionizing levels.

Out-of-plane (e, 2e) measurements are reported for the helium autoionizing levels (2s2)1S, (2p2)1D, (2s2p)1P, and for direct ionization. While the recoil peak almost vanishes in the angular distribution for direct ionization, it remains significant for the autoionizing levels and exhibits a characteristic shape for each orbital angular momentum L=0, 1, 2. A second-order model in the projectile-target interaction correctly reproduces the observed magnitudes of the recoil peaks, but is a factor of 2 too large in the central out-of-plane region.

Photoexcitation of a dipole-forbidden resonance in helium.

We have observed photoexcitation of the dipole-forbidden 1s(2) 1S0-->2p(2) 1D2 resonance in helium by measuring the nondipolar forward-backward asymmetry of photoelectron angular distributions in the 2l2l(') autoionizing region. By exploiting the electric dipole-quadrupole interference in the excitation of both the 2s2p 1P1 and 2p(2) 1D2 levels, we have observed the quadrupole resonance in photoabsorption and extracted its Fano line shape parameters and the relative phase of the 1sEp and 1sEd continua. We find the quadrupole line profile index q(2) to be markedly different from theoretical expectations.