The creation, destruction, and transfer of multipole moments in electron- and proton-impact ionization of atoms and ions

Abstract

Expanding on previous works that involved elastic and inelastic scattering of electrons by atoms and ions, we use the wave-packet propagation scheme of Dollard to define multipole moment creation, destruction and transfer cross sections for electron- and proton-impact ionization of atoms and ions. The electron-impact cross sections can then be used by defining appropriate rate coefficients for use in Fujimoto’s population-alignment collisional-radiative model for cylindrically symmetric plasmas. Our result for the alignment creation cross section is in agreement with those formulae that were obtained earlier intuitively or by semi-classical collisional methods. The multipole cross sections obtained here can be used also for modelling the relaxation behaviour of laser-excited plasmas under cylindrical symmetry conditions. We have also derived the electron- and proton-impact ionization multipole cross sections in terms of Liouville-space quantities, which then enabled us by using group theoretical methods to obtain the azimuthal-angle dependence of the multipole cross sections and symmetry properties that are results of reflection across a plane over the collisional axis.