Electron Scattering by the Metastable Rare Gases

Abstract

Calculations are presented for elastic scattering of electrons by the ${}_{}{}^3{}_{}{}^{}S_1^{}{}_{}{}^{}$ metastable state of helium, and the ${}_{}{}^3{}_{}{}^{}P_2^{}{}_{}{}^{}$ metastable states of neon, argon, krypton, and xenon, using an effective potential which matches the experimental binding energy of negative ions and incorporates the known atomic polarizability as a parameter. The results are in fair agreement with experiment and one other calculation for the case of helium. All the results are featured by large cross sections and by the large contributions of higher angular momenta at low energies.