Triple Differential Cross Section Measurements for Electron-Impact Ionization of Methane from a Coplanar Geometry to the Perpendicular Plane.

A new study of electron-impact single ionization of the HOMO 1t2 state of CH4 has been conducted at incident electron energies 20 eV and 40 eV above the ionization energy of the state. Triple differential cross sections were measured from a coplanar symmetric geometry, where scattered and ionized electrons were detected at equal angles, through to the perpendicular geometry where the outgoing electrons emerged orthogonal to the incident electron beam. At the lower energy the electrons were detected with equal energies of 10 eV, whereas at the higher energy, data were obtained for equal energies of 20 eV, and for unequal energies of 5 eV and 35 eV. The results are compared to a molecular 3-body distorted wave (M3DW) approximation that used a full averaging procedure to allow for the random orientation of the target, an orientation averaged molecular orbital (OAMO) model that averages the target wavefunction over all orientations prior to the collision, and a distorted wave Born approximation (DWBA) that does not include post-collisional interactions.