Due to the quality of a large number of results obtained with the CTMC, method for collisions involving H and He targets, it is obviously tempting to extend the method to multielectronic targets. The simplest target to use seems to be Li, which has two electrons in the 1s orbital and a less bound electron on the 2s shell. Then, the method is extended to multielectronic targets such as Ne or Ar.
Interest and MotivationDue to the quality of a large number of results obtained with the CTMC method for collisions involving H and He targets, it is obviously tempting to extend the method to multielectronic targets. The simplest target to use seems to be Li, which has two electrons in the 1s orbital and a less bound electron on the 2s shell. Rather than reasoning like this, we will study the processes according to the energy of the active electrons. We are going to distinguish the targets whose active electrons are energetically little bounded to the nucleus in comparison with the other electrons. This is true for example for the alkaline elements (Li, Na, K, Cs), and for the atoms for which an electron is initially in a highly excited state. For these elements, apart the active electron, the other electrons can be, in first approximation, considered as frozen (Fig. 5.1).In the case where the targets have active electrons are on similar shells, such as Ne, Ar, Kr or Xe, the problem is more complex, because electrons on a same orbital cannot be considered anymore as independent. Nevertheless, to calculate total cross sections, independent electron models (IEM) are efficient, as well as scaling law. One has to be careful, because even though scaling laws and IEM are really useful, they give rise to absolute results with an uncertainty that can be larger than 10%. This value is considerable when problems involving a huge number of particles have to be solved.Before discussing results obtained with the CTMC method, two examples using scaling laws derived from classical results, and the Classical Over Barrier Model, will be given.