Electron Coincidence Spectroscopy: An Introduction to Momentum Space Chemistry

Abstract

The application of electron coincidence or (e,2e) spectroscopy to obtaining detailed information on the dynamic structure of atoms and molecules is discussed. The technique obtains separation energy spectra and spherically averaged electron momentum distributions for each molecular orbital in the valence region. A brief discussion of molecular orbital density functions in momentum space is given. The results using Hartree-Fock wavefunctions for atomic orbitals and LCAO-MO wavefunctions for molecular orbitals are compared with (e, 2e) data. The sensitivity of the data to electron correlations in either the initial or final ion many body states is discussed and examples are given.