Electron-impact single ionization for the Fe²⁺ ion

Abstract

Electron-impact ionization was analyzed for all 34 levels of the ground configuration of the Fe2+ ion. Both direct and indirect ionization processes are included in the study. For the direct process, the potential of the ionized ion was used to explain experimental data. For the indirect process, electron-impact excitation with subsequent autoionization was considered. The convergence of the cross sections of the indirect process was determined by considering the excitations up to shells with the principal quantum number n ⩽ 20. The main contribution to the indirect process was determined by the 3p → 3d excitations. The scaled distorted-wave approximation was applied to explain measurements for the Fe2+ ion. Scaling of the cross sections lowers values by ~35% at the peak for the ground level and ~50% for the highest level of the ground configuration of the Fe2+ ion. The experimental value for the single ionization threshold was used to provide better agreement with the measurements for the cross sections. This led to the cross sections for the levels of the ground configuration diminishing in size by 15–25%. The direct process contributes ~70% and ~50% to the total ionization from the lowest and highest levels of the ion, respectively.