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Recent developments in the field of alignment and orientation studies of electron impact excitation of atoms are discussed. This article reviews experiments which have a well defined planar symmetry, i.e. in which the initial and final momenta of electrons are determined. The experimental results obtained by different groups during the last four years are presented after a brief theoretical introduction followed by a description of typical experimental arrangements.

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We present experimental values of the electron impact coherence parameters (EICP) and reduced Stokes parameters for excitation of 51P1 state of cadmium atoms. The results have been obtained using electron–photon coincidence technique for incident electron energies 80 eV and 60 eV and electron scattering angles in the range of 5° to 50°. We also present an additional set of data for electron energy 100 eV and scattering angle 50° which complements our previous results. All the experimental values are compared with theoretical relativistic distorted-wave approximation (RDWA) calculations. The first Born approximation (FBA) predictions of the alignment angle are also presented. The theoretical results are in good qualitative agreement with the experimental data.

First direct measurements are reported of the linear reduced Stokes parameters P 1 , P 2 for H(2p) excited by electron impact at the benchmark energy of 54.4 eV. The results differ significantly from previous values deduced from angular correlation measurements which are in serious conflict with all sophisticated theoretical approaches. Our results support the trend of theoretical predictions for P 2 and confirm that its value is negative at electron scattering angles above 100 ± , as predicted by theory. [S0031-9007(98)05388-5]