Ionization of helium in positron collisions

Abstract.

A new Coulomb distorted-wave method with coupled-channel target functions is used to calculate total ionization cross-sections for helium in positron collisions. Besides Slater-like orbitals we use regular Coulomb wave packets in our configurational interaction basis to describe the target continuum. The incident positron energy was varied between the ionization threshold and 500 a.u. The results are in good agreement with experimental data and other theoretical calculations. Comparing to other sophisticated distorted wave methods our model is much easier to implement and gives accurate results. As a new feature we present ionization cross-sections where the He ⁺ ion remains in the 1s ground state or excited to the 2s or 2p state. As we know there are no experimental work done to determine such cross-sections. In the case of ionization followed by 2s or 2p excitation we compared our results with other calculations.