Calculated cross sections for the electron-impact ionization of atomic ions

The electron-impact ionization of atomic ions plays an important role in physical phenomena ranging from discharges to high-temperature stellar and fusion-related plasmas. In the absence of reliable ab initio, fully quantum mechanical calculations of ionization cross sections of ions, scaling laws are of great importance in order to predict electron-impact ionization cross sections of sufficient accuracy for e.g. modelling purposes. However, only a few methods have been applied to this subject to date. This paper presents a new scaling law for ionization cross sections of hydrogen-, helium-, and lithium-like ions which is based on the Deutsch-Mark (DM) formalism. We also present calculations of ionization cross sections for other atomic ions based on the DM approach