Single ionization of water molecules in collisions with bare ions

We present the double differential cross sections (DDCSs) for the direct ionization of water molecules by impact of fully stripped helium, carbon and oxygen atoms, respectively. In the present formalism, we have represented the wavefunction in the entrance channel as the product of a plane wave for the projectile and an accurate one-center-molecular wavefunction of the water molecule by Moccia (1964 J. Chem. Phys. 40 2186). In the exit channel, we have expressed the total wavefunction as the product of pair-wise Coulomb wavefunctions among the ejected electron, projectile ion and the residual target ion, respectively. The contributions of DDCSs for five different molecular orbitals of water to the spectrum of angular distributions have been analyzed for several electron emission energies. The present results for DDCSs are compared with existing experimental and theoretical findings. We find an overall good agreement between our calculated results and the experimental findings for electron emission cross sections. In addition, DDCS results for ionization from different orbitals at a few electron emission energies are given in tabular form. (paper)