Abstract
More than one hundred years of experimental and theoretical investigations of electron scattering in gases delivered cross-sections in a wide energy range, from few meV to keV. An analogy in optics, characterizing different materials, comes under the name of the dispersion relation, i.e., of the dependence of the refraction index on the light wavelength. The dispersion relation for electron (and positron) scattering was hypothesized in the 1970s, but without clear results. Here, we review experimental, theoretical, and semi-empirical cross-sections for N2, CO2, CH4, and CF4 in search of any hint for such a relation—unfortunately, without satisfactory conclusions.
Highlights
More than one hundred years of experimental and theoretical investigations of electron scattering in gases delivered cross-sections in a wide energy range, from few meV to keV
Experimental determinations are relatively easy for total cross section (TCS) in the energy range 1–100 eV, using beam methods [10]
A “missing channel” in the measurements of partial cross sections in molecules is, frequently, the dissociation into neutral fragments. All these partial cross sections should sum-up to the TCS
Summary
Cross sections for electron scattering are the input data in modeling and diagnostics of industrial plasma, gas discharge [1], thermonuclear plasma [2,3], biological media [4,5], and atmospheric processes, including extra-solar planets [6]. Such modeling requires the knowledge of the total and partial (elastic, ionization, dissociation, and electronic, vibrational, rotational excitation) cross sections in a broad energy range. Experiments, theory, and semi-empirical models are the input data for further modeling, yielding improved sets of data (see [20])
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