Talk:Auger effect

Untitled

Auger electrons are emitted due to surplus energy in the atom.

In this article, Auger electrons are assumed to be emitted upon only electron bombardment. But they can be emitted upon the ion bombardment as well. So I think this article needs to be more general. -- Mindgame123 05:50, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Is this the same as "Auger decay"? Jeff Knaggs 10:28, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Pronunciation

The article previously specified the pronunciation of Auger as /oʊˈʒər/. This strikes me as completely absurd (does anybody say that?). In French of course it's [oʒe], which in Britain at least tends to be approximated as /oʊˈʒeɪ/ or similar. -- TJollans (talk) 06:58, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Confusing lede

The Auger effect is a physical phenomenon in which the filling of an inner-shell vacancy of an atom is accompanied by the emission of an electron from the same atom.[1] When a core electron is removed, leaving a vacancy, an electron from a higher energy level may fall into the vacancy, resulting in a release of energy. Although most often this energy is released in the form of an emitted photon, the energy can also be transferred to another electron, which is ejected from the atom; this second ejected electron is called an Auger electron

Confusing muck. I can't tell what it consists of or the sequencing. Does the vacancy gets filled by an external electron? "When a core electron is removed" -- is this subsequent to the "filling" that just occurred in the previous sentence? "May" fall -- why this lawyer language -- isn't the falling necessary for the Auger effect? And in the final sentence, the Auger electron is introduced so slyly, so conversationally, behind the much more common, red-herring, energy-release photon, that the definition is clouded again, because the energy-release photon may or may not exclude the Auger effect. We don't know. Possibilities are evoked, but no clear sequence proffered. It's all very chatty and episodic. 178.39.122.125 (talk) 23:15, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

What is the difference between an "internal conversion effect" and a "radiationless effect" ?

The observation of electron tracks that were independent of the frequency of the incident photon suggested a mechanism for electron ionization that was caused from an internal conversion of energy from a radiationless transition. Further investigation, and theoretical work using elementary quantum mechanics and transition rate/transition probability calculations, showed that the effect was a radiationless effect more than an internal conversion effect.

What is the relationship between an "internal conversion effect" and a "radiationless effect"? In the first sentence, they are presented as two steps of the same process. In the second sentence, they seem to be alternatives. The slightly weasely "more than" in the second sentence does not help; it suggests that the classification is a fuzzy one, perhaps still not settled. Is that really the case here?

On top of this, I looked at the page on "internal conversion" and found that it involves nuclear energy that morphs into electron shell energy before leaving the atom. On that definition, one might think the Auger effect is NEVER an internal conversion effect -- since the diagram at the top shows the Auger effect being initiated by an external electron -- which is not a nuclear process.

But the wording of the lede -- in contrast to the diagram -- only says that there has to be a vacancy in a low-lying shell, not how it was produced. So presumably it could be produced by a nuclear interaction. And sure enough, in the article on internal conversion, it says that after an electron is kicked out by a nuclear interaction, Auger electrons can be produced. So these are also called Auger electrons. So Auger electrons can INDEED be produced by internal conversion, contradicting the paragraph in the present article about Auger's theoretical work.

Of course, the original experiments of Auger involved incident x-rays, not nuclear, so in his case, there is no internal conversion.

Is it also "radiationless"? If no extra photon comes out, like in the diagram, I guess it is. But if gamma rays come out, I guess it isn't. So "radiationless" is not an alternative to "internal conversion".

All very confusing the first time you read it. I think the lede needs to be rewritten to be clearer. The sequencing and the passive language is confusing. Mentioning the explicit mechanisms that knock out the low-lying electron -- external particle versus nuclear interaction -- would help. Clarifying in the diagram that the diagram is only ONE way to produce an Auger electron would also help (the other way being nuclear). 178.39.122.125 (talk) 08:38, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

Or the primary electron that gets kicked out is "internal conversion" and then the subsequent Auger electron is "radiationless". It needs to be clarified by an expert. 178.39.122.125 (talk) 09:22, 24 July 2016 (UTC)