Iterative approach to the Schwinger variational principle applied to electron—molecular-ion collisions

Abstract

We present a study of electron—molecular-ion collisions. The scattering equations are solved using an iterative approach to the Schwinger variational principle. These equations are formulated using the Coulomb Green's function to properly treat the long-range Coulomb tail of the molecular-ion potential. We apply this approach to electron—hydrogen-molecular-ion collisions in the static-exchange approximation. We obtain elastic differential cross sections, and also use the continuum states from these calculations to compute the photoionization cross section of the hydrogen molecule. The iterative method used here converged rapidly in all calculations performed.