Electron impact excitation of zinc vapor at 40 eV

Differential and integral electron impact cross sections for elastic scattering and for the excitation of the $4p{}_{}{}^3{}_{}{}^{}P$, $4p{}_{}{}^1{}_{}{}^{}P$, $5s{}_{}{}^1{}_{}{}^{}S$, and $5p{}_{}{}^1{}_{}{}^{}P$ states of zinc have been determined for the first time at 40 eV impact energy. The measurements were normalized to the absolute scale by utilizing the optical $f$ value of the $4p{}_{}{}^1{}_{}{}^{}P$ transition. We find that the integral cross section for the $4p{}_{}{}^1{}_{}{}^{}P$ excitation is quite large (1.0 × ${10}^{-15\mathrm{}}$ ${\mathrm{cm}}^2$) and exceeds that for elastic scattering (2.1 × ${10}^{-16\mathrm{}}$ ${\mathrm{cm}}^2$) by a factor of nearly 5.