UNIFIED THEORY OF AUGER-ELECTRON EMISSION

Following previous work the photoexcited Auger effect is treated as a full scattering process. The Auger electron emission is thus interpreted as a resonance in double photoionization. The usefulness of the multichannel resonant-scattering approach is illustrated by recent analyses of threshold excitation of atomic inner-shell hole states with synchrotron radiation. In particular, we consider as a function of photon energy the evolution of shake-modified resonant autoionization into post collision interaction. The theory is also used for an examination of the separability of the Auger decay from the photoionization process.