Ionization of Hydrogen Atom by Proton Impact—How Accurate Is the Ionization Cross Section?

Abstract

For the control of fusion reactors, we need to accurately know all the possible reactions and collisional cross sections. Although large-scale trials have been performed over the last decades to obtain this data, many basic atomic and molecular cross section data are missing and the accuracy of the available cross sections need to be checked. Using the available measured cross sections and theoretical predictions of hydrogen atom ionization by proton impact, critical analysis of the data is presented. Moreover, we also present our recent classical results based on the standard classical trajectory Monte Carlo (CTMC) and quasi-classical trajectory Monte Carlo (C-QCTMC) models. According to our model calculations and comparison with the experimental data, recom-mended cross sections for ionization of hydrogen were presented in a wide range of pro-jectile impact energies. We found that, while in the low energy region, the experimental cross sections are very close to the C-QCTMC results, at higher energies, they are close to the results of our standard CTMC results.

Keywords

• proton-atom collision
• ionization
• classical trajectory Monte Carlo method
• collision