Charged particle collisions

X-rays are produced when an electron in an outer shell of an atom jumps to an inner shell to fill an electron vacancy. The difference in energy is emitted as an X-ray photon. The vacancy giving rise to such a transition can be produced by an energetic photon, bombardment of charged particles (e, p, a. .), or by nuclear processes such as internal conversion, K-cap-ture, etc. If a charged particle collision or a nuclear process produces the vacancy, the resulting X-ray emission is called primary. If the vacancy is produced by an X-ray photon, the subsequent emission is called secondary or fluorescence radiation. 

It is helpful to distinguish three different types of problem to which Newton s laws of motion may be applied. In the simplest case, no force acts on each particle between collisions. From one collision to the next, the position of the particle thus changes by v,5f, where v, is the (constant) velocity and 6t is the time between collisions. In the second situation, the particle experiences a constant force between collisions. An example of this type of motion would be that of a charged particle moving in tr uniform electric field. In the third case, the force on the particle depends on its position relative to the other particles. Here the motion is often very difficult, if not impossible, to describe analytically, due to the coupled nature of the particles motions. 

In charge exchange collisions the cross-section depends upon the energetics of the reaction. To compute the energy defect, the initial and final states of the colliding particles must be specified. This can be done easily for the bombarded neutral molecule, which usually can be assumed to be in the ground state before the collision, but not for the incident ion which is often in one of its metastable states. 

Inelastic collisions of swift, charged particles with matter are completely described by the distribution of generalized oscillator strengths (GOS s) characterizing the collision. These quantities, characteristic of excitation in the N-electron target (or, in fact, of a dressed projectile as well [1]) from some initial state 0) to a final state n) and concomitant momentum transfer, can be written... 

In the foregoing, U is the interaction potential, M is the reduced mass of the colliding system, ftk and ftk are respectively the momentum of the projectile before and after the collision, ig and in are respectively the wavefunctions of the atom (or molecule) in the ground and nth excited states, and the volume element dt includes the atomic electron and the projectile. Since U for charged-particle impact may be represented by a sum of coulombic terms in most cases, Eq. (4.11) can be written as (Bethe, 1930 Inokuti, 1971)... 

The dipole oscillator strength is the dominant factor in dipole-allowed transitions, as in photoabsorption. Bethe (1930) showed that for charged-particle impact, the transition probability is proportional to the matrix elements of the operator exp(ik r), where ftk is the momentum transfer. Thus, in collision with fast charged particles where k r is small, the process is again controlled by dipole oscillator strength (see Sects. 2.3.4 and 4.5). 

It should be noted, however, that gaining a deeper insight into the problem of ionization phenomena is not the only reason for steady interest in the problem. Data on charged particle impact ionization is used both for industrial applications and for fundamental scientific research. For applications it is the collisions rates and total cross sections which are usually the most relevant. But in studies focused on the understanding of collision mechanisms of ionization processes, most of the information is lost in the total cross sections due to the integration over the momenta of the ejected electrons in the exit channel. Therefore it is the singly and doubly differential cross sections which are of... 

Positron A positively charged particle of mass equal to an electron. Positrons are created either by the radioactive decay of unstable nuclei or by collision with photons. 

Kunkel (K9) has derived expressions for the collision rate of charged particles allowing for both Coulomb attraction forces and ionic image forces. His final expressions, however, are not readily applied and he concludes only that the rate of growth of a particle over a period of several seconds is small if... 

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