Twisted electron impact single ionization coincidence cross-sections for noble gas atoms

TL;DR

This study investigates how twisted electron beams affect the triple differential cross-section in ionization of noble gas atoms, revealing peak shifts and splitting phenomena not seen with plane wave electrons, using a theoretical first-born approximation approach.

Contribution

It introduces a theoretical formalism for analyzing (e,2e) ionization processes with twisted electrons, comparing effects of orbital angular momentum and beam opening angles on TDCS.

Findings

Peaks in binary and recoil regions shift with twisted electrons.

For larger opening angles, p-orbital peaks split into double peaks.

Angular profiles depend strongly on the twisted electron parameters.

Abstract

We present the angular profiles of the triple differential cross-section (TDCS) for the (e,2e) process on the noble gas atoms, namely He (1s), Ne (2s and 2p), and Ar (3p) for the plane wave and the twisted electron impact. We develop the theoretical formalism in the first-born approximation. The present study compares the TDCS for different values of orbital angular momentum number $m$ and opening angles $\theta_p$ of the twisted electron beam with that of the plane wave beam. In addition, we also investigate the TDCS for macroscopic atomic targets to explore the influence of opening angle $\theta_p$ of the twisted electron beam on the TDCS. Our results show that the peaks in binary and recoil region shift from the momentum transfer direction. The results also show that for larger opening angles the peaks for $p$-type orbitals split into double-peak structures which are not observed in the plane wave results for the given kinematics. The angular profiles for averaged cross-section show the dependence of TDCS on the opening angles which are significantly different from the plane wave TDCS.