Oscillator strength targets

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... 

Here Z is the charge of the projectile with velocity v. In order to calculate stopping powers for atomic and molecular targets with reliability, however, one must choose a one-electron basis set appropriate for calculation of the generalized oscillator strength distribution (GOSD). The development of reasonable criteria for the choice of a reliable basis for such calculations is the concern of this paper. 

The parameter e0 was chosen for best agreement with the experimental data of Opal et al.52 at = 500 eV. Jain and Khare applied this equation to the calculation of ionization cross sections for C02, CO, HzO, CH4, and NH3 and achieved fairly good agreement with experiment for all cases except for CO, where the cross section was too low, though the ionization efficiency curve still exhibited the correct shape. The main limitation of this method, which it has in common with the BED theory, is the inclusion of the differential oscillator strengths for the target molecule which restricts the number of systems to which it can be applied. 

Over the years, Jens Oddershede has written extensively on various aspects of energy deposition by swift ions in material targets. In many cases, he has been concerned with the orientational effects of target molecules with respect to the projectile beam direction, and has explained these differences in the context of the relevant oscillator strength distribution of the target [1-8]. It is in the spirit of Jens work that we carried out this study of the orientational aspects of the energy deposition by swift protons in water, and we report them now in celebration of his the-third-times-twentieth birthday. 

In this section we discuss the more important experimental results for continuum oscillator strengths measured by electron spectroscopy that have been reported up to mid 1978. The discussion is divided on the basis of target species rather than the type of experiment since this stresses the interrelation and complementary nature of many of the experiments. As the experimental work is far from complete in many cases, only a limited picture of the overall breakdown processes is available at present. In particular, a very limited amount of work has been reported for inner shells. More data are generally available for mass fragmentation (photoionization mass spectrometry) than for partial ionization cross sections (photoelectron spectroscopy). 

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