Liquid Water Ionization by Energetic Electron Impact

We theoretically study the single ionization of liquid water by impact of fast electrons. A realistic description of the wavefunction for an isolated water molecule in the liquid phase is obtained by means of a Wannier orbital formalism. In this way, we consider ionization from the most external orbitals 1B1, 2A1, 1B2 and 1A1 of a single liquid water molecule. Triple, double, single differential and total cross sections are computed through a first order model with proper Coulomb conditions for the ionized electron. We compare our calculations with measurements and other theoretical results for liquid and gaseous phases. An analysis of the main features of the cross sections is performed. Previous theoretical works found almost no discrepancies between these observables in spite of the physical dissimilarities of both phases. In this work, we compare our results with other theories and with the available experiments for vapor. We report interesting differences between the differential and total cross sections of the mentioned phases.