Electron-positron pair production, the main process for high energy photon interaction with matter, has a large analyzing power for linear polarized photons. Our calculations show that in the GeV energy range a compact polarimeter based on silicon micro-strip detectors is feasible. We calculated the cross secton as a function of the angle between the polarization plane and the line between positron and electron positions in the detector. For a thin radiator and equal energies of the positron and electron, the ratio sigma||/sigma- is about 1.6. At a beam intensity of 10^6 photons per second a polarization measurement with a 1% statistical accuracy will require less than one hour of data taking.

Authors: Bogdan Wojtsekhowski, D. Tedeschi, B. Vlahovic

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