Electron scattering by formamide: Elastic and electronically inelastic cross sections up to 179 energetically open states

Abstract

The Schwinger multichannel method with pseudopotentials was employed to obtain elastic and electronically inelastic cross sections for the scattering of electrons by formamide up to impact energies of 50 eV. The scattering calculations were carried out according to the minimal orbital basis for the single-configuration-interaction strategy and considered up to 179 open target states in the composition of the space of coupled channels for the description of the multichannel coupling. To include polarization effects, we consider only the excitations related to the hole-particle pairs used in the active space of the minimal orbital basis for the single-configuration-interaction approach. The elastic and electronically inelastic cross sections for the excitation from the ground state to the first four low-lying electronically excited states of formamide are presented, and these results are compared to previous calculations available in the literature. The partial and total ionization cross sections calculated with the binary-encounter-Bethe model and the total cross section calculated as the sum of the elastic, total electronically inelastic, and total ionization cross sections are also reported.