This award supports cooperative research in theoretical physics to be conducted by David Cartwright, George Csanak and Robert Clark of Los Alamos National Laboratory and Gilda Meneses and Luis Machado of Unicamp in Campinas, Brazil. The topic is the study of inelastic electron scattering by atomic and diatomic targets. They will extend first-order many-body theory and the distorted wave approximation to the excitation of rare-gas and alkaline earth atoms by electron impact. These calculations will be perfomed on open shell targets such as atomic O, N, and F. In addition, the same techniques will be applied to calculations for diatomic molecular targets. Finally, second-order many-body theory will be used to treat both inelastic and elastic electron scattering by helium atoms. These theoretical techniques have been developed over nine years and three previous collaborations between LANL and Unicamp. This work will extend the theoretical and computational capabilities of both groups to more compicated processes of interest in plasma physics. A number of other scientists in both laboratories will be involved in the work including several students. The past cooperation has resulted in seven graduate degrees and fifteen papers at international conferences.
