Excitation of the6 P11,3states of mercury by spin-resolved electron impact

Abstract

Recent measurements have been made of the angle-integrated Stokes parameters for the spin-polarized electron impact excitation of the $6s6p$ $(J=1)$ states in mercury, resulting in the emission of 185 and 254 nm radiation to the ground state through the ${^{1}P}_{1}\text{\ensuremath{-}}{^{1}S}_{0}$ and ${^{3}P}_{1}\text{\ensuremath{-}}{^{1}S}_{0}$ transitions, respectively. These measurements give information on the electron exchange and spin-orbit coupling effects of the target and projectile electrons. We have evaluated the integrated Stokes parameters using our relativistic distorted-wave method which takes direct account of the fine structure of the excited atomic states as well as the spin of the incident electrons. We compare these results with the recent experimental and theoretical data. In general the agreement between our theoretical results and the experimental measurements is very good.