Resonant nuclear scattering of synchrotron radiation: Detector development and specular scattering from a thin layer of iron-57

his dissertation explores resonant nuclear scattering of synchrotron radiation. An introductory chapter describes some useful concepts, such as speedup and coherent enhancement, in the context of some basic physical principles. Methods of producing highly monochromatic synchrotron beams using either electronic or nuclear scattering are also discussed. The body of the dissertation concentrates on detector development and specular scattering from synthetic layered materials.;A detector employing microchannel plate electron multipliers is shown to have good (;Maxwell's equations are used to derive the specular x-ray reflectivity of layered materials with resonant transitions and complex polarization dependencies. The effects of interfacial roughness are treated with some care, and the distorted wave Born approximation (DWBA) used to describe electronic scattering is generalized to the nuclear case. The implications of the theory are discussed in the context of grazing incidence measurements with emphasis on the kinematic and dynamical aspects of the scattering. The theory is shown to simulate the measured specular response of a thin (240A) layer of...