Theory of Penning Ionization. I. Atoms

Abstract

The theory of Penning ionization (PI) and related associative ionization (AI) is developed and examined in a classical, semiclassical, and quantum mechanical framework, the correspondence between the several descriptions being explicitly deduced; formulas for total cross sections for PI and AI, angular distributions for PI, and the distribution of energies of the ionized electron are presented. The possibility of anomalous structure is seen to appear in the energy distribution of the ejected electrons if the difference between the A*–B and A–B+ potential curves has a local extremum as a function of internuclear distance. Classically, this appears as an infinity in the distribution of electron energies, but the quantum mechanical expressions are reduced to obtain a uniformly valid approximation; the transition region through the classical infinity is characterized by an Airy function.