Switching of Photon Helicities in the Hard X-Ray Region with a Perfect Crystal Phase Retarder

Abstract
Alternate production of right- and left-handed circular polarizations was performed with a X-ray phase retarder of the transmission type in Bragg geometry. A piezo-driven oscillation stage was constructed for flipping the X-ray phase retarder around the Bragg angle by 10∼80 arcseconds in the bistable mode. Switching of photon helicities up to 100 Hz was achieved at λ=0.1463 nm