Calculated cross sections for elastic scattering of slow positrons by silane

Abstract

In this work we investigate elastic collisions of low-energy positrons with silane (${\mathrm{SiH}}_{4}$). We employed the Schwinger multichannel method to calculate integral and differential cross sections for impact energies up to 10 eV. The calculations were performed within the static plus polarization approximation. We carried out a systematic study employing different schemes to account for the polarization effects of the target due the presence of the incoming positron. We investigate how the inclusion of extra functions in different extra (chargeless) centers affects the calculated cross sections and the physical phenomena such as the Ramsauer--Townsend minimum and the virtual state formation. Our results are compared with available experimental total cross sections and with integral and differential cross sections computed with a model correlation-polarization potential. In particular, our integral cross section agrees well with the experiment at low energies and our differential cross sections agree well with the results from previous calculations.