Coherent electron impact excitation of the n=2 states of atomic hydrogen at intermediate energies

Abstract

A theoretical analysis is given of the parameters M1+M3, M2 and cos delta which describe the coherent excitation of the n=2 states of atomic hydrogen by intermediate-energy electrons. At small momentum transfers, where they have recently been measured by Back et al. (1984), the parameters M1+M3 and M2 are dominated by first Born s-p amplitudes, but outside the small-angle region higher-order effects are shown to be very important. The parameter cos delta is also very sensitive to higher-order effects. Unitarised eikonal-Born series (UEBS) results are presented for M1+M3, M2 and cos delta at incident electron energies of 100, 300 and 350 eV.