Orientation effect on the secondary-electron distributions for the HCl double ionization

Abstract

Multiple differential cross sections of the double ionization of hydrogen chloride molecule impacted by electrons are here provided within the first Born approximation. The incident and scattered electrons are represented by plane wave functions, whereas the target is described by means of a single-center molecular wave function. The two ejected electrons are modeled by Coulomb wave functions and a Gamow factor is introduced to take into account the Coulomb repulsion between the two outgoing particles. In this work, we study the relative contributions of the four outermost orbitals of the HCl molecule to the double ionization process in the particular case of two electrons ejected from different subshells. The multiple differential cross sections are analyzed for specific target orientations and compared in terms of magnitude and shape. We report a strong dependence of the cross sections versus the target orientation by pointing out the signature of the well-known double ionizing processes, namely, the shake-off and the two-step 1 mechanisms.