English

Exchange effects in elastic collisions of spin-polarized electrons with open-shell molecules with $^3\Sigma_g^-$ symmetry

Chemical Physics 2009-11-13 v1 Atomic Physics

Abstract

The spin-exchange effect in spin-polarized electron collisions with unpolarized open-shell molecules, O2_2, B2_2, S2_2 and Si2_2, has been studied by the R-matrix method with the fixed-bond approximation. All of these molecules have 3Σg{}^3 \Sigma_{g}^{-} symmetry in their ground states. Usual integrated cross sections with unpolarized electrons has also been studied. We used the complete active space self consistent field orbitals and put more than 10 target electronic states in the R-matrix models. In electron O2_2 elastic collisions, calculated polarization fractions agree well with the experimental results, especially around the 4Σu{}^4 \Sigma_u^- resonance. In e-B2_2, S2_2 and Si2_2 elastic collisions, larger spin-exchange effect is observed compared to the e-O2_2 elastic collisions. In all four cases, spin-exchange effect becomes prominent near resonances. This association of resonance and magnitude of the spin-exchange effect was studied by explicitly removing the resonance configurations from the R-matrix calculations. In general, spin-exchange effect is larger in e-B2_2 collisions than in e-S2_2 and Si2_2 collisions, and is smallest in e-O2_2 collisions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0712.1068,
  title  = {Exchange effects in elastic collisions of spin-polarized electrons with open-shell molecules with $^3\Sigma_g^-$ symmetry},
  author = {Motomichi Tashiro},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0712.1068},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

Phys. Rev. A, in press