Regular Article

Cross section scaling for H₂O ionization by highly-charged ion impact^★

¹ Departamento de Física, Instituto de Física del Sur (IFISUR), Universidad Nacional del Sur (UNS), CONICET, Av. L. N. Alem 1253, B8000CPB Bahía Blanca, Argentina
² Department of Physics, Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla, MO 65409, USA

^a e-mail: nicolas.bachi@uns.edu.ar

Received: 30 September 2018
Received in final form: 12 December 2018
Published online: 21 February 2019

Abstract

Electron production following single and multiple ionization of H₂O by bare ion impact is theoretically studied by means of the classical trajectory Monte Carlo method. Our results are benchmarked against experimental data collected in different laboratories and other theoretical data obtained by means of distorted wave methods. In this work, the ten electrons in the molecule are explicitly considered, in contrast to previous formulations based on a single active electron description of the target. Present studies cover the energy range of (100 keV/amu)/Z_p to (1000 keV/amu)/Z_p, where Z_p is the incident projectile charge. Projectile charges investigated ranged from 1⁺ to 13⁺. A simple scaling of the cross section is presented.