ENERGY-DISTRIBUTION OF SECONDARY ELECTRONS IN ELECTRON-IMPACT IONIZATION OF HYDROGEN-LIKE IONS

The energy distribution of secondary electrons in electron-impact ionization of ions is important in computer simulation of high temperature plasmas. Surprisingly enough, no one has published the required data. In this paper, the Coulomb-Born type calculations with and without electron-exchange effect are reported. The 1/Z4 scaling law holds fairly well down to smaller Z values, Z being the nuclear charge of the hydrogen-like target ion. The dependence on the incident electron energy is represented fairly accurately by an empirical factor in the approximation without electron exchange.