Study of the simultaneous emission of two photons in collisions between neon atoms using photon coincidence techniques

Abstract

The energy dependence of the total cross section for simultaneous excitation of the target and projectile atom in Ne+Ne collisions to states of the 2p53p configuration has been studied for collision energies from 50 to 700 eV. It is estimated that simultaneous excitation occurs in about 25% of the inelastic events. Cross sections for the population of two individual 2p53p states, Q(2pn mod 2pn') (Paschen notation), have been studied in detail for the case n=1. The relative magnitude of these cross sections depends on the population of the molecular states involved. Relative populations of these states have been determined from the reported measurements.