Electron-impact excitation of some low-lying levels of neon

First-order many-body theory has been used to calculate the differential and integral cross sections for electron-impact excitation of all the $3s$, ${3s}^{\prime }$ levels, and certain of the $3p$, ${3p}^{\prime }$ levels of neon, for incident electron energies ranging from 20 to 120 eV. The resulting differential cross sections for the excitation of the optically allowed ${}_{}{}^1{}_{}{}^{}P_1^{}{}_{}{}^{}$ and the ${}_{}{}^3{}_{}{}^{}P_1^{}{}_{}{}^{}$ levels show, for the 10° ≤ θ ≤ 80° angular range, a discrepancy no greater than 15% when compared with recent experimental results, except for very few points. Spin-orbit coupling was included in the wave functions and its effect on determining the differential cross sections for the ${}_{}{}^3{}_{}{}^{}P_1^{}{}_{}{}^{}$ level was found to be very important for scattering angles less than 40°. For the differential cross sections of the other $3s$, ${3s}^{\prime }$ levels the discrepancy in the 30° ≤ θ ≤ 80° range is only slightly larger than the experimental errors. For the $3p$, ${3p}^{\prime }$ levels considered here, we have found strong disagreement with experimental data and there is also substantial disagreement among the various theoretical results.