Calculation of the cross sections for electron impact excitation of magnesium

There have been calculated the energy dependences of the electron impact ex citation cross section for 50 transitions from the ground state of magnesiu m atom. Optically allowed, intercombined transitions and transitions occurr ing due to the nondipole interaction of an incident electron with atom ic e lectrons are involved. The calculations are based on the Born approximation with taking into account the exchange through the modified Ochkur approxim ation. As the ground state wave function there have been used either the fa miliar expansion of Hartree-Fock function over Slater exponents or the mode l potential wave functions. It was found that in the case of excitation of low states the model potential wave functions provides better agreement wit h experimental data and with data of other calculations. The agreement of r esults obtained with few available experimental data and data of other calc ulations is within 40%. There have been proposed simple approximating analy tical expressions for the cross sections, which obey proper limiting energy dependences and permit to represent with sufficient accuracy the calculati on results through two fitting parameters.