Low Energy Electron Impact Excitation of Water*

We present normalized absolute differential and integral cross-section measurements for the low energy electron impact excitation of the lowest dissociative $^{3}$B$_{1}$, $^{1}$B$_{1}$,$^{3}$A$_{1}$ and $^{1}$A$_{1}$ states of H$_{2}$O. The DCS were taken at incident energies of 9eV, 10eV, 12eV, 15eV and 20eV and scattering angles of 15$^{\circ}$ to 130$^{\circ}$ and normalized to the elastic electron scattering measurements of [1]. The DCS were obtained after a sophisticated unfolding of the electron energy loss spectrum of water using photoabsorption data in the literature as investigated by Thorn et al. [2]. Our measurements extend those of [2] to near-threshold energies. We find both important agreements and differences between our DCS and those of [2]. Comparison to our theory (multi-channel Schwinger) and that of earlier work [3] will also be presented. \\[4pt] [1] M. A. Khakoo et al. Phys. Rev. A 78, 052710 (2008).\\[0pt] [2] P. A. Thorn et al. J. Phys. B.: At. Mol. Phys. 40 697 (2007).\\[0pt] [3] T. J. Gil Phys. Rev. A 49, 2642 (1994)