Total Cross Sections for Inelastic Scattering of Charged Particles by Atoms and Molecules. VII. The Neon Atom

The Bethe theory for the calculation of the total inelastic cross section ${\sigma }_{\mathrm{tot}}$ for the scattering of fast charged particles by atoms and molecules is applied to neon. As part of the analysis, the spectral distribution of the oscillator strength has been determined by critical evaluation of all experimental data and by test of several sum rules. The result is ${\sigma }_{\mathrm{tot}}=z^2{\beta }^{-2\mathrm{}}\left\{3.524\right[\ln \left(\frac{{\beta }^2}{(1-{\beta }^2)}\right)-{\beta }^2]+36.06\}\times {10}^{-20\mathrm{}}$ ${\mathrm{cm}}^2$ for a particle of charge $\mathrm{ze}$ and speed $\beta c$. As an application, the ionization cross section is estimated by subtracting the sum of all the discrete excitation cross sections from ${\sigma }_{\mathrm{tot}}$ and is compared with experimental values.