Electron loss and target excitation in keV-energy proton collisions with B and C$^{+}$

TL;DR

This study applies an advanced close-coupling method to proton collisions with boron and carbon ions, providing detailed cross sections and target excitation data from 10 keV to 1 MeV, with good experimental agreement.

Contribution

It introduces an updated target-structure implementation using fractional parentage coefficients and provides comprehensive cross section calculations for these systems.

Findings

Total excitation cross section dominated by 2s subshell excitation.

Calculated electron-loss cross section agrees well with experimental data.

Highlights the importance of multi-electron descriptions in scattering calculations.

Abstract

The one-centre Coulomb-Sturmian convergent close-coupling method is applied to proton collisions with the boron atom and singly charged carbon ion. Here we report an update to our target-structure implementation, in which configuration state functions are constructed using the method of coefficients of fractional parentage. To assess the quality of the structure models for the two targets, we present the excitation energies, oscillator strengths, and dipole polarisabilities obtained from the present configuration interaction calculations. Cross sections for total and state-selective target excitation and electron loss are calculated from 10 keV to 1 MeV. For both systems, the total excitation cross section is found to be dominated by excitation of the $2s$ subshell. This emphasises the importance of a multi-electron description of the target in such scattering calculations. Comparisons with previous theoretical and experimental data are presented and discussed. In particular, we find that the present calculation for the electron-loss cross section in $p$ + C$^{+}$ collisions is in good agreement with the available measurements across the entire overlapping incident-energy range.