XPS for time resolved X-ray spectroscopy of plasmas

Photoelectron spectroscopy is based on the simple energy conservation relation between a photon and an electron, hν = E /sub b/ + E /sub k/ , where hν is the photon energy, E /sub k/ is the electron kinetic energy and E /sub b/ is the binding energy of the electron ejected by the photon. In photoelectron spectroscopy, monochromatic photons are used to extract information about the various E /sub b/ 's in an atomic system by measuring E /sub k/ . By using atomic systems having a single electronic level with significant photoionization cross-section at the photon energies of interest it is also possible to find the energy of photons in a polychromatic source, again by measuring E /sub k/