Elastic scattering of slow electrons by n-pentanol alcohol

Abstract

We report elastic integral (ICS), differential (DCS) and momentum transfer cross sections (MTCS) for low-energy electron scattering by n-pentanol alcohol in the gas phase. The Schwinger multichannel method implemented with pseudopotentials was employed in the calculations. The DCSs were computed for energies from 1 to 50 eV and the ICS and MTCS from 1 to 100 eV. Due to the significant value of the electric dipole moment, the DCSs are dominated by strong forward scattering. Despite this fact, the DCS around 10 eV displays a behavior related to a f-wave scattering pattern at intermediate angles which may be associated with shape resonances. This result is consistent with the ICS and the MTCS since they show a pronounced peak near this energy. For energies below 1 eV, the MTCS obtained in the static-exchange plus polarization approximation does not increase, as expected for polar molecules, suggesting that a Ramsauer-Townsend minimum could be present. This finding motivated us to revisit the previously studied methanol, ethanol, n-propanol and n-butanol molecules and to perform new calculations for impact energies below 1 eV (not addressed before). With the inclusion of polarization effects, the MTCS for the five alcohols suggest a Ramsauer-Townsend minimum coming from the negative to the positive scattering energies. To the best of our knowledge, there are neither experimental nor calculated cross sections for comparison with the present results.