Excitation of the 2s State of Atomic Hydrogen by Electron Impact in the Distorted-Wave Approximation - Angular Distributions

The excitation of ground-state hydrogen atoms to the $2s$ state by the impact of electrons with energies of 1 to 50 Ry (13.6 to 680.3 eV) has been calculated in the distorted-wave approximation with exchange included. The angular distributions of the scattered electrons at 1 and 4 Ry are compared with those derived from the close-coupling calculations by Burke, Schey, and Smith, and are compared with four different plane-wave theories at all energies calculated. Taking the close-coupling results as a standard, it is found that the distorted-wave angular distributions represent an improvement over those of the plane-wave theories.