Neon electrons impact

Ne is metastable neon produced by electron impact. Ne transfers its excitation to hydrogen molecules. The hydrogen molecules participating in these energy transfer collisions are produced in highly excited preionized states which ionize after a time lag sufficient to permit the initial neon and hydrogen collision partners to separate. The hydrogen ion is formed in the v = 5 or 6 quantum states and reacts with a second neon... 

Panesh et al. [157] were the first to make an attempt to detect rare gas metastable atoms (RGMAs) with the aid of semiconductor sensors. The sensing element (a sensor) was represented by a sintered polycrystalline film of ZnO metastable atoms were obtained in a neon ambient by electron impact. It was shown that electrical conductivity of ZnO film irreversibly increases under the action of RGMAs. However, the signals obtained were too small and that did not allow one to utilize the sensing technique to survey the processes with participation of metastable atoms. 

Figure 3.3 The K Auger spectrum of neon (shown in Fig. 3.1) caused by electron impact. See also [KMe66, KCM71, ATW90]. Reprinted from Phys. Lett., 31A, Krause et al., 81 (1970) with kind permission from Elsevier Science - NL, Sara Burgerhartstraat 25, 1055 KV Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Uber Polarisation bei Neon-Elektronenstossleuchten und Neon-Kanalstrahlleuchten (Polarization of spectral lines of neon excited by electron impact and in canal rays), Z. Phys. 54, 819-825 (1929) (with B. Quarder). 

A common result of all the experiments is that most molecules quench the alkali resonance radiation very effectively with total cross sections ranging from 10 A2 to over 200 A2. However, if the molecule BC is replaced by a rare-gas atom, the quenching cross sections become very small at thermal energies. They are probably below 10 2 A2 for quenching by helium, neon, argon, krypton, and xenon.55 The latter result is easily understood in terms of Massey s adiabatic criterion.67 If Ar is a characteristic interaction range, v the impact velocity, and AE the energy difference between initial and final electronic states E(3p) and E(3s), respectively, then we must have a Massey parameter... 

Cross sections for neon and argon have also been presented by Coleman et al. (1982) and Mori and Sueoka (1994), though here there are no theoretical data for comparison. The positron and electron cross sections (the latter from the work of de Heer, Jansen and van der Kaay, 1979) are of very similar magnitude, despite the fact that triplet states cannot be excited by positron impact. 

In fact, this mechanism has been confirmed by a calculation of the cross sections for impact ionization and impact excitation in electron-ion collisions [36]. The latter was found to be exceptionally low for neon. The basic features of recollision excitation follow from an amplitude such as (4.1) with, however, integration over one additional time the first electron tunnels out at the time t", recollides, promotes the bound electron into an excited state with energy Eq2 > E02, and leaves the interaction region at the time t > t", while the bound electron only becomes free at the later time t > t. Figure 4.5 exhibits the results of such a model. Indeed, for a sufficiently high-lying excited state, the region around zero ion momentum is filled in. 

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