Elementary processes in gas discharges

This chapter presents, from a quantum-mechanical point of view, a tutorial discussion of elementary collision processes in the bulk of a gas discharge. Instead of merely listing kitchen-made cross section formulae and unrelated cross section data, emphasis has been given on an unified description of elementary processes based on general principles of quantum-mechanical multi-channel scattering theory. By necessity, the presentation is rather dense. Technical details left out, as well as cross section data, can be found, respectively, in the quoted original papers and the review articles, monographs, and web-sites mentioned in the introductory remarks to this chapter.