The Distorted-Wave Born Approach for Calculating Electron-Impact Ionization of Molecules

Don H Madison,Ola Al-Hagan

doi:10.1155/2010/367180

Abstract

The distorted-wave Born approximation (DWBA) has been one of the most successful theoretical approaches for treating electron collisions with complicated atoms, and recently the DWBA has been successfully extended to treat electron-impact ionization of molecules. The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of that development and to provide a summary of the recent experimental and theoretical works examining low to intermediate energy electron-impact single ionization of molecules.

Highlights

One of the most fundamental, unsolved problems in physics is the few-body problem
Significant theoretical progress for calculating fully differential cross-section (FDCS) for electron-impact ionization of molecules has been made in the last few years, there is still much to be done
Is the simple model of Al-Hagan et al [110] correct which states that molecules which have a nucleus at the center of mass will have strong back-to-back scattering in the perpendicular plane while molecules which do not have a nucleus at the center of mass will have weak back-to-back scattering? We have one data set supporting this model and one data set that does not support it

Summary

Introduction

One of the most fundamental, unsolved problems in physics is the few-body problem. The few-body problem arises from the fact that the Schrodinger equation is not analytically solvable for more than two mutually interacting particles. For collisions involving more than two particles, discrepancies between experiment and theory must be attributed to the fewbody aspects of the theoretical model. The recent advancements in experimental techniques, such as coldtarget recoil-ion momentum spectroscopy (COLTRIMS) [1,2,3,4,5] have allowed for complete kinematic information about every particle in the system to be determined. These fully differential cross-section (FDCS) measurements provide a stringent test for even the best theoretical models

Objectives

Results

Conclusion