Measurement of absolute differential cross sections for the excitation of the π,π* triplet state of ethene by electron impact at 0° and 180°

Abstract

A recently developed magnetically collimated electron impact spectrometer with pulsed incident electron beam and time-of-flight selection of electrons scattered in the forward and backward directions was used to measure differential cross sections (DCSs) for the excitation of the valence triplet state of ethene at scattering angles of 0° and 180°. The measurements are complemented by data at intermediate angles measured with a conventional spectrometer using hemispherical electron-energy analyzers. A pronounced trend is found in the DCS measured as a function of incident electron energy at 0°, 90°, and 180°: a band assigned as the (π,π*2)2 core excited shape resonance becomes substantially wider and moves to higher energies with increasing angle of observation. The DCS have also been measured as a function of scattering angle, in the range 0°–135° and at 180°, at 1.5, 3, and 10 eV above threshold. The DCS was found to be strongly backward peaked at energies higher than 5 eV above threshold. The results at 0° and 180° are found to be a sensitive test of the theory. All qualitative trends are reproduced well by recent published Schwinger multichannel and complex Kohn theories, but quantitative differences are found in the absolute magnitude of the DCSs and the position of the resonances.