A highly polarized 3He target for the electron beam at MAMI

Polarized He-3 from metastability exchange optical pumping (MEOP) is used as an effective polarized neutron target for electron scattering experiments at the MAinz Microtron (MAMI). With the present setup an initial polarization of up to 72% has been obtained at the experimental area. A novel calibration technique will be presented which allows the determination of the absolute polarization within a relative uncertainty of 3%. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.