Present status of the experimental L-shell ionization cross sections for light ion impact

Abstract

Compilations of all available experimental L-shell X-ray production and ionization cross sections for proton and light ion impact have recently been produced by the group from the National University of Singapore (I. Orlic, C.H. Sow and S.M. Tang, At. Data Nucl. Data Tables 57, in press; I. Orlic, Experimental L-shell x-ray production and ionization cross sections for light ion impact, internal report, National University of Singapore, Department of Physics, 1993 [1,2]). Together with the previous tabulations more than 9700 experimental data points for proton impact and approximately the same number of data points for heavier ion impact have become available. An overview of all available experimental data is given in this work. Discussed are annual growth and decline of published data, distribution of L-shell cross section data vs. target atomic number as well as distribution of number of data vs. incident ions. Experimental data are compared with the corresponding ECPSSR predictions in the usual manner: plotting the ratio S = σ exper./ σ theory vs. reduced velocity parameter for each individual subshell L1, L2 and L3 separately for proton and heavier ion impact. Mean experimental cross sections are obtained using the statistical procedure recommended by the Particle Data Group (Particle Data Group, Phys. Lett. B 204 (1988) 5 [3]). Statistical errors of mean values are significantly smaller than errors of individual experimental results allowing for some generalization. A brief review of the obtained results is presented.