On the phenomenological treatment of potassium-potassium excitation collisions by a first order Born approach

Abstract

The first order Born formula is applied to elastic and inelastic collisions of potassium atoms on potassium atoms at centre of mass kinetic energies in the range 50<or=ECM<or=100 eV. The diatomic potassium system is idealized to form an effective four body system composed of two valence electrons and two cores. It is shown that whereas this model is sufficiently flexible to fit the elastic differential cross section measurements, the excitation cross sections cannot be obtained with the same pseudopotentials. Moreover, the pseudopotentials obtained from a fit to the elastic cross sections turn out to be slightly energy dependent.