Energy deposition and electron energy degradation in molecular hydrogen

Calculations have been made of degradation and sub-excitation spectra in dilute, molecular hydrogen produced by monoenergetic source electrons of 2, 10 and 30 keV. The cross section data of Gerhart for electronic excitation and ionisation were re-examined and refined. Absolute yields for the production of electronic excitations, positive and negative ions and vibrational and rotational excitations, are tabulated. These results were produced by a new code for computation of degradation spectra from the Spencer-Fano equation. The sensitivity of computed spectra to internally consistent variation in the input is examined.