Abstract
This chapter discusses the fundamental aspects of collisions in plasmas by relating it to the collision frequency to the collision cross section and then to the differential scattering cross section, which contains the essential features of the collisional interaction between two particles. The collision cross section depends on electron velocity or energy. The dependence is because of the fact that electron–molecule collisions represent an interaction between the incoming electrons and the electrons, plus the nucleus of the molecule. This gives rise to a spatially varying interaction potential between the electron and the molecule that causes the cross section to vary with the relative velocities of the two collision partners. The chapter discusses the scattering of a particle by a central force, that is, the potential because of the scattering partner is purely radial. The scattering theory helps derive the differential and total scattering cross sections. The chapter also describes electron–molecule hard-sphere collisions.
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