  Complete polarization analysis applied to resonant x-ray scattering at the Cr
K-edge in K2CrO4 shows that incident linearly polarized x-rays can be converted
into circularly polarized x-rays by diffraction at the Cr pre-edge (E = 5994
eV). The physical mechanism behind this phenomenon is a subtle interference
effect between purely dipole (E1-E1) and purely quadrupole (E2-E2) transitions,
leading to a phase shift between the respective scattering amplitudes. This
effect may be exploited to disentangle two close-lying resonances that appear
as a single peak in a conventional energy scan, in this way allowing to single
out and identify the different multipole order parameters involved.
