Angular distributions of penning electrons

Angular distributions of electrons ejected in thermal collisions of He(2¹ S, 2³ S)-metastables with Ar, Kr, Xe, Hg, CO, N₂ are measured with respect to the vector of relative velocity of the colliding particles. Except for preliminary results on the He(2₁S, 2³ S)-/Ar-system, these are the first such distributions reported. They are found to be strongly anisotropic and asymmetric in some cases, and approximately isotropic in those cases where the interaction potential between the metastable- and the target particle is strong. For the cases of weak interaction potential, the connection between the “internal” angular distribution in the frame fixed to the internuclear axis and the laboratory angular distribution, has been derived. Calculations of laboratory angular distributions involving an assumed “internal” distribution and the kinematics of a hard core collision show good qualitative agreement with the experimental results.