ABSOLUTE ELECTRON-IMPACT IONIZATION CROSS-SECTIONS FOR HIGHLY-CHARGED IONS - SCALING LAW FOR HYDROGEN-LIKE IONS

Scaling laws are of great importance in the description of elementary processes in plasma physics and plasma chemistry. This is particularly true for electron impact induced ionization of atoms, molecules and their respective ions. The recently proposed semi-classical DM (Deutsch-Mark) approach for the calculation of the single ionization cross section of atoms is applied here to the single ionization of hydrogen-like ions and the formula derived can be used to rationalize the empirically-based scaling law for the ionization cross section of hydrogen-like ions, i.e. the Z(4) power dependence, where Z is the nuclear charge. The results obtained are compared with previous experimental and theoretical ionization cross section functions.