Regular Article

Study of elastic and inelastic cross sections by positron impact on inert gases

¹ Atomic and Molecular Physics Lab, Department of Applied Physics, Indian Institute of Technology (Indian School of Mines), Dhanbad, JH 826004, India
² Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology, Indore, MP 452013, India
³ Department of Astronomy, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA
⁴ Department of Chemistry, University of Western Ontario, London, Canada

^a e-mail: bobby@iitism.ac.in

Received: 6 December 2017
Received in final form: 13 February 2018
Published online: 30 April 2018

Abstract

In this article, a modified computational method recently introduced is used for the calculation of total, positronium (Ps) formation and ionization cross sections including direct and total ionization cross sections for positron scattering from noble gases. The incident positron is assumed to have energies over a wide range from ~5 eV to 5 keV. The positron–atom interaction potential is developed under an optical potential framework and the computations of cross sections for each process are performed by introducing appropriate absorption thresholds. The calculated results obtained by employing this modified approach are found to be in reasonably good agreement with most of the existing data.