Ionization and excitation collision processes of electrons in liquid water

This paper reports on Monte Carlo simulations of electrons in liquid water using a set of electron collision cross-sections constructed with data published recently. The track history of electrons having initial energy ranged from 1 keV to 10 keV is investigated looking at the ionization and excitation processes. The results show that the ratio of the ionization and excitation events per track history is unique independent of the initial electron energy above a couple of 100 eV and these inelastic processes occur with low energy electrons frequently below 100 eV. In particular, the excitation processes are dominated by the electrons below 50 eV. Flight distance distributions between the inelastic collisions are also discussed.