Characteristic plateau in the L1-subshell ionization cross section of Ag induced by proton collisions

A characteristic dependence of the proton-induced 2s subshell ionization cross section generated by the nodal structure of the 2s wave function was probed via high-resolution measurements of the Lβ3 (L1-M3) and Lβ6 (L3-N1) x-ray lines of Ag. The intensity ratio of the measured lines depends strongly on the proton energy exhibiting a pronounced maximum around 0.4 MeV. The experimental intensities are critically compared to the theoretically predicted values. The latter were obtained using the ionization cross sections calculated within the semiclassical approximation employing hydrogenlike and Dirac-Fock electron wave functions.