A search for chiral asymmetry in secondary electron emission from cysteine induced by longitudinally polarized electrons

We performed experiments searching for chirality-dependent secondary electron emission for a 141 eV longitudinally spin-polarized electron beam incident on a thick solid cysteine target. We determined the secondary electron yield by measuring the positive current produced when the cysteine target was negatively biased. No spin-dependent effects to a level of 10−3 were found for the secondary electron emission yield.