English

Hyperfine-changing transitions in $^3$He II and other one-electron ions by electron scattering

Atomic Physics 2015-06-19 v1 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics

Abstract

We consider the spin-exchange (SE) cross section in electron scattering from 3^3He\,{\scriptsize II}, which drives the hyperfine-changing \hbox{3.46 cm} (8.665 GHz) line transition. Both the analytical quantum defect method --- applicable at very low energies --- and accurate R-matrix techniques for electron-He+^+ scattering are employed to obtain SE cross sections. The quantum defect theory is also applied to electron collisions with other one-electron ions in order to demonstrate the utility of the method and derive scaling relations. At very low energies, the hyperfine-changing cross sections due to e-He+^+ scattering are much larger in magnitude than for electron collisions with neutral hydrogen, hinting at large rate constants for equilibration. Specifically, we obtain rate coefficients of K(10K)=1.10×106cm3/sK(10\,{\rm K}) = 1.10 \times 10^{-6}\,\rm cm^3/s and K(100K)=3.49×107cm3/sK(100\,{\rm K}) = 3.49\times 10^{-7}\,\rm cm^3/s.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1405.4893,
  title  = {Hyperfine-changing transitions in $^3$He II and other one-electron ions by electron scattering},
  author = {Klaus Bartschat and H. R. Sadeghpour},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1405.4893},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

9 pages, 5 figures, Accepted for Astrophysical Journal