Resonant electronic excitation in e--O collisions

Abstract

The excitation to the higher lying levels of the (2p4) configuration of oxygen in the course of an e--O collision is theoretically studied. The authors show that this excitation can be understood and represented as a resonant process involving the O- bound state as a collision intermediate. This resonant excitation process is studied within the effective range approximation that the authors previously developed on the e--O2 collisional system. Excitation cross sections for the 1D and 1S states are compared with previous experimental and theoretical results. Analysis of the high energy behaviour of the effective range results yields a simple means for a priori evaluating the importance of the resonant excitation process.