Electron-impact ionization and excitation of helium to the n=1-4 ionic states

We present high-precision (e,2e) measurements and calculations for the e-He four-body Coulomb breakup problem. Cross-section ratios for ionization and excitation of the first three excited states of He+ relative to the ground state have been measured for incident energies between 112 and 319 eV. Comparing the data with predictions from a state-of-the-art hybrid distorted-wave+convergent R matrix with pseudostates (close coupling) approach shows that treating the projectile-target interaction at least to second order is crucial to obtain reasonable agreement between theory and experiment. Nevertheless, our benchmark studies reveal significant theoretical problems for the symmetric energy-sharing cases, thus indicating the need for further improvement.