Auger electron peak shapes in electron impact experiments

Abstract

In most measurements the line shapes of the Auger peaks ejected after electron impact inner shell ionization are definitely asymmetric ones. Among the physical processes which can distort the originally symmetric peaks, the post-collision interaction (PCI) has the greatest importance. The PCI is the Coulomb interaction of the charged particles in the final state. In non-coincidence experiments, when the scattered and the ejected electrons are not detected, the peak shapes can be obtained by integrating the triple coincidence peak shapes over the non-measured quantities. Calculations were carried out in order to determine the energy- and angular dependence of Auger peak shapes. In addition to the peak shapes some interesting features of the L 2,3MM Auger electron spectra of Ar and Kr are shown.