Electron-impact ionization excitation of helium in the quasiphoton regime

The triply differential cross section of ionization excitation of helium, leaving the residual ion in the n = 2 excited states, is evaluated for the kinematics considered experimentally by Dupre et al. [J. Phys. B 25, 259 (1992)]. The interaction of the incident electron with the target is described at the first order, while the interaction of the ejected electron with the residual ion is treated very accurately within the formalism of the Jacobi matrix method. In the quasiphoton limit and for low ejected electron energies, the presence of series of doubly excited states, mainly below the n = 3 single ionization threshold in helium, makes the triply differential cross sections extremely sensitive to both the energy and the emission angle of the ejected electron. We show that the convolution of our results with a Gaussian energy profile, in which the full width at half-maximum corresponds to the energy resolution in the experiment, has a significant effect. Our results suggest that it is also important to account for the finite resolution on the measurement of the scattering angle when the experimental data are compared to the theoretical predictions. Comparison of our theoretical results convoluted both in energy and in angle with the experimental data demonstrates the importance of an accurate description of the helium spectrum. A possible two-step mechanism involving single ionization of the target followed by excitation of the core electron is proposed to explain the remaining discrepancies.