Relativistic effects in low-energy spin-dependent electron collisions with rare-gas atoms

The relativistic effects in low-energy spin-dependent electron scattering from rare-gas atoms Ar, Kr and Xe are analyzed by comparing the results obtained respectively with Dirac-Fock, Cowan's quasirelativistic Hartree-Fock and non-relativistic Hartree-Fock wave functions for target atoms. It is shown that the intra-target relativistic effects, in particular the explicit spin dependences of the one-electron orbitals of Dirac-Fock atomic wave function, create apparet quantitative changes in the spin polarization parameters at some collision energies and scattering angles.