Molecular theory of atomic collisions: A generalized perturbed stationary states approach

Abstract

The perturbed stationary states equations, which describe low velocity atomic/ionic collisions using continuum states of the aggregate molecule have been generalized to include the effects of electron translation. The generalized nuclear scattering equations reduce to those of the perturbed stationary states method as the electron mass tends to zero. As either nuclear charge tends to zero, the solutions describe the translation of a free atom. The extraction of the proper T−matrices from the nuclear scattering solutions is a major difficulty in the molecular description of atomic collisions since molecular coordinates are not asymptotically appropriate. To this end we have examined asymptotic limits of the Fadeev equations, written in terms of potentials rather than the usual transition operators, to obtain the proper scattering boundary conditions and expressions for the inelastic, rearrangement and ionization T−matrices The theory is to be applied to charge transfer reactions involving low velocity collisions of hydrogen atoms with multiply charged ions.