Kinetics of thermal diffusive ionization of Rydberg atoms

Abstract

The time dependence of the diffusive ionization rate of Rydberg atoms is investigated in the regime of their pulse generation, when a definite number of gas atoms is excited to the Rydberg states with binding energy mod EG mod >>kBT at the initial time. In the case of electron-electron scattering the problem is solved for arbitrary mod EG mod .