Qualitative interpretation of resonance effects in vibrational excitation cross sections of diatomic molecules by slow electrons

Abstract

It is suggested to solve the problem of resonance vibrational excitation of diatomic molecules colliding with slow electrons without using a formal expansion in wave functions with complex eigenvalues. The main point is to overcome the difficulties associated with the necessity of considering at the same time a large number of inelastic channels so as to account for the long range part of the interaction potential. In the model proposed inelastic scattering is determined by the parameters of a single interaction potential, determining also elastic scattering. As a result we obtain as a special case an equation similar in structure to that of Herzenberg and Mandl [1] for evaluating cross sections. As an example numerical calculations were performed for spherical square well potentials, indicating the presence of characteristic resonance cross sections already in this simplest case.