Inner-shell ionization of atoms by electron, positron and photon impacts

Abstract

Plane wave Born approximation with Coulomb, relativistic and exchange corrections is employed to obtain L1-, L2- and L3-subshell ionization cross sections of several atoms due to electron and positron impacts for projectile energy varying from the threshold of ionization to 60 times the threshold energy. Photoionization cross sections for all the three L-subshells of the atoms are also calculated using the hydrogenic approximation for the atomic wave functions. For L3-subshell the present cross sections due to electron impact are in good agreement with a number of experimental data for different atoms over the entire energy range investigated. For L1- and L2-subshells the present calculations yield qualitative agreement with the experimental data. The agreement between the present results and the limited experimental data for positron impact is also satisfactory. The hydrogenic approximation for the L-subshell photoionization is found to be good at small photon energies but it underestimates the cross sections at large photon energies.