Abstract
Differential and total elastic cross sections are given in the first Born approximation for electrons incident on the ground and metastable (21S and 23S) states of helium. Unrestricted Hartree-Fock wavefunctions have been employed and for the ground state the resultant differential cross section is compared with those obtained using unrestricted Hartree-Fock and many-parameter wavefunctions. For the metastable states the differential cross section is very strongly peaked in the forward direction and the total cross sections are an order of magnitude larger than that for the ground state.