Excitation of the metastable states of the noble gases

We have used the relativistic distorted-wave approximation to calculate the excitation of the lowest metastable states of neon, argon, krypton, and xenon [the $J=0,2$ levels of the np⁵(n+1)s configuration] to the ten higher-lying fine-structure levels of the np⁵(n+1)p configuration. We compare our results with experimental measurements of the integrated cross section at energies up to 4000.3em0exeV and with other theoretical calculations for these cross sections.