Vibrational excitation at high energies and potential-surface models

Abstract

Models for studying systems provided by an atom and a diatomic molecule by means of high-energy vibrational excitation were constructed and discussed. The use of the inverse scattering treatment to recover the potential from the scattering data for multidimensional potential surfaces was demonstrated by examining the quantum-mechanical rainbow, or the nonmonotone behavior of the scattering probability as a function of quantum number, using the uniform quasiclassical approximation for the T scattering amplitude in terms of the action angle variable. Expressions for differential elastic cross sections were derived and evaluated. The analysis with made it possible to estimate the vibrational coupling constant in the molecular collision potential and to explain the behavior of the rainbow peak as a function of collision energy.