Excitation of the 2p$^5$3p states of neon by incident electrons

A polarized photon-scattered electron correlation study of excitation of the individual 2p$^5$3p states of neon and their decay to the 2p$^5$3s states provides valuable information on a range of physical effects influencing the alignment and orientation of the excited states. These include exitation of a well LS-coupled state through electron exchange and the excitation of states with different J values, but where L and S are not good quantum numbers. Here we concentrate on excitation of the 3p[5/2]$_3$ state with the emission of a 640.2 nm photon in decay to the 3s[3/2]$_2$ state. All four differential Stokes parameters necessary to describe this pure $^3$D$_3$ excited state will be presented for an incident electron energy of 50 eV and for scattering angles up to 120$^\circ$. The data will also be shown in terms of parameters describing the excited state charge cloud and compared with available theory and a previous experiment over a more limited angular scattering range.