New Publication: "Scaled plane-wave Born cross sections for atoms and molecules," H. Tanaka, M. J. Brunger, L. Campbell, H. Kato, M. Hoshino, and A. R. P. Rau. Rev. Mod. Phys. 88, 025004 (45 pp) (2016).

The Born approximation, as applied and extended by Bethe in the 1930s, has been dominant and useful for calculating scattering cross sections of electrons from atoms and molecules. In the intermediate energy region of 10 to 300 eV, detailed calculations are cumbersome and computationally expensive so that for a variety of applications of radiation penetration in matter, simpler scaled cross sections are valuable. This article critically reviews such cross sections, their theoretical justification and comparison with available experimental data, and provides analytical expressions for a number of atoms and small molecules relevant to astronomy, plasmas, and medicine. Read more