Excitation of the 31P state of magnesium by electron impact from the ground state

We present results of convergent close-coupling calculations for excitation of the ground 3¹S state of magnesium to the 3¹P state for incident electron energies from threshold to 1000 eV. Good agreement is found with measurements of the 3¹P optical excitation function and polarization of the 3¹P-3¹S radiation. Good agreement is also found with the available, but limited, experimental electron-photon correlation data. However, occasional significant discrepancies have been identified between theory and experiment for the differential cross sections.