Multielectronic close-coupling treatment of atomic and molecular collisions: applications to H+-Li collisions in the keV energy range

Abstract

We present a new approach to describe electronic processes occurring in ion-atom and ion-molecule collisions at impact energies ranging from 50 eV.u−1 to 1 MeV.u−1. The treatment is based on the semiclassical approximation in which the time-dependent Schrödinger equation is solved non perturbatively, taking into account all the electrons of the collision system. This allows to describe exactly multielectronic processes and also, at the same footing, processes involving valence and inner shell electrons. We apply this model to describe electron transfer in a genuine three-electron system, H+-Li.