L. G. Ferreira

Elastic scattering of low-energy electrons by OCS molecules.

We report results from an ab initio calculation of low-energy electron scattering by OCS molecules. We used the Schwinger multichannel method with pseudopotentials at the fixed-nuclei static-exchange approximation to calculate elastic integral, differential and momentum transfer cross sections in the energy range from 5 to 50 eV. We compare our results with available theoretical results and experimental data. Through the symmetry decomposition of our integral cross section and eigenphase sum analysis, we found structures in the cross sections that may be interpreted as shape resonances for ∑, ∏ and Δ symmetries. We compared the results for OCS with our previous results on the e––CS2 collision. In particular, we found a similar behaviour in the shape of the symmetry decomposed cross sections of OCS and of CS2 when, for the latter, we sum over the ‘g’ and ‘u’ contributions.

Electron scattering from molecules: applications of the Schwinger multichannel method to e−–CO and e−–C2H4 collisions

To illustrate our recent efforts to obtain electronic excitation cross sections of molecules by electron impact, we present in this paper results for the X 1Σ a 3Π and A 1Π transitions of CO obtained with the Schwinger multichannel method. Our results are in good agreement with other theoretical calculations, although not so good when compared with experiments. We also discuss the importance of inclusion of polarization effects to obtain electronic excitation cross sections of some molecules through an example using the C2H4 molecule, which has a triplet state with a low-energy threshold. Finally, we present a very simple rule to estimate integral electronic excitation cross sections using the differential cross section (DCS) at 900, which can be useful to experimentalists using apparatus with difficulties to measure the DCSs at angles around 0 and 180 degrees. We show its efficiency for the present electronic excitation of the C2H4 molecule by electron impact.