Eur. Phys. J. D (2017) 71: 127
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2017-70713-x

Regular Article

Double ionization of helium by proton impact: from intermediate to high momentum transfer^*

¹ Department of Physics, Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas 66506, USA
² Théorie, Modélisation, Simulation, SRSMC, UMR CNRS 7565, Université de Lorraine, 57078 Metz, France
³ Departamento de Física, Universidad Nacional del Sur, 8000 Bahía Blanca, Buenos Aires, Argentina
⁴ Instituto de Astronomía y Física del Espacio (IAFE, CONICET–UBA), Casilla de Correo 67 – Suc. 28 (C1428ZAA), Ciudad Autnoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina
⁵ Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, 1430 Buenos Ares, Argentina

^a e-mail: mjambrosio@phys.ksu.edu

Received: 15 November 2016
Received in final form: 17 January 2017
Published online: 25 May 2017

Abstract

We study theoretically the double ionization of helium by 6 MeV proton impact. For such fast projectiles, when considering the projectile-target interaction to first order, the four-body Schrödinger equation reduces to solving a three-body driven equation. We solve it with a generalized Sturmian functions approach and, without evaluating a transition matrix element, we extract the transition amplitude directly from the asymptotic limit of the first order scattering solution. Fivefold differential cross sections (FDCS) are calculated for the double ionization process for a number of coplanar kinematical situations. We present a detailed theory-experiment comparison for intermediate momentum transfers (from 0.8 to 1.2 a.u. and from 1.4 to 2.0 a.u.). In spite of some experimental restrictions (energy and momentum ranges) and the low count rates, we found that our theoretical description provides a very satisfactory reproduction of the measured data on relative scale. We then explore how the binary, recoil and back-to-back structures change with increasing momentum transfers (0.853 to 1.656, to 3.0 a.u.). Within the impulsive regime, with a momentum transfer of 3.0 a.u., we also analyze the FDCS for different excess energies. Finally, in analogy to an experimentalist gathering electrons with different excess energies to obtain enough counts, we provide a collective FDCS prediction that hopefully will stimulate further measurements.