Eur. Phys. J. D (2015) 69: 106
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2015-50729-0

Regular Article

Viscosity cross sections for the heavy noble gases

¹ Atomic and Molecular Physics Laboratories, Research School of Physics and Engineering, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia
² Department of Physics and Astronomy, York University, Toronto, M3J 1P3, Canada

^a e-mail: stauffer@yorku.ca

Received: 2 October 2014
Received in final form: 29 December 2014
Published online: 14 April 2015

Abstract

We have calculated viscosity cross sections for argon, krypton and xenon from zero to 1 keV using the phase shifts from our previous publication [R.P. McEachran, A.D. Stauffer, Eur. Phys. J. D 68, 153 (2014)] which presented total elastic and momentum transfer cross sections for these gases. As previously, we present simple analytic fits to our results to aid in modelling plasmas containing these atoms. By using the current results and those in reference [R.P. McEachran, A.D. Stauffer, Eur. Phys. J. D 68, 153 (2014)] the first two ‘partial cross sections’ used in the general moment method of solving the Boltzmann equation can be obtained. The agreement of our viscosity cross sections with experimentally derived results indicates the overall reliability of our calculations.