Electron impact single ionization of the water molecule in the second Born approximation

Abstract

A general formalism is presented to calculate the triple-differential cross section for the ionization of neutral atoms and simple molecules with the chemical form XHn in the frame of the second Born approximation using the closure approximation. The first Born term and a part of the second term are calculated analytically and the remainder is calculated semi-analytically. A new method is given to eliminate analytically the singularities occurring in the second Born term. The post-collision interaction between the scattered and ejected electrons is considered approximately using the Gamow factor. To check the accuracy of the present formalism, the ionization of the atomic hydrogen by electron impact is considered. The present formalism is developed to investigate the single ionization of the water molecule by electron impact. The comparison of our results with the experiments and previous theoretical findings shows good agreement and contrary to the previous theoretical calculations, our results predict two peaks in the recoil region.