ABSTRACT
Dichroism is a property of certain objects that enables them to show different colors according to their orientation with respect to the light. It is due to the dependence of the optical response of the object on the relative orientation between the polarization direction of the light and the symmetry axes of the object. With x-rays, in some cases, a difference can be observed between the absorption of positive and negative helicity light (sometimes called left-and right-circularly-polarized light) [x-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD)] or for different orientations of the polarization vector of linearly-polarized light with respect to a given quantization axis [x-ray magnetic linear dichroism (XMLD)].
