Abstract

Very recently it was shown that the molecular three-body distorted wave (M3DW) approach gives good agreement with the shape of the experimental data for electron-impact ionization of H2 in a coplanar symmetric geometry, providing the incident electrons have an energy of 35 eV or greater. One of the weaknesses of these studies was that only the shape of the cross section could be compared to experiment, since there was no absolute or relative normalization of the data. Here we report a joint experimental/theoretical study of electron-impact ionization of H2 in a coplanar asymmetric geometry where the energy of the incident electron was fixed, and different pairs of final state electron energies were used. In this case, the experimental data can be normalized such that only one renormalization factor is required. It is shown that the M3DW is pretty good in agreement with experiment. However, a better treatment of polarization and exchange between the continuum and bound state electrons is required before quantitative agreement between experiment and theory is achieved.

Department(s)

Physics

Sponsor(s)

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
National Science Foundation (U.S.)

Keywords and Phrases

Electron Impact Ionisation; Hydrogen Neutral Molecules; Molecular Configurations; Molecule-Electron Collisions; Charge exchange

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

0021-9606

Document Type

Article - Journal

Document Version

Final Version

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2006 American Institute of Physics (AIP); Association for Iron & Steel Technology (AIST), All rights reserved.

Publication Date

01 Jan 2006

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