Resonant enhanced electron impact dissociation of molecules

In the collision of electrons with molecules and molecular ions, excitation and dissociation are dominated by resonant processes, where the electron becomes temporarily trapped, changing the forces felt by the nuclei. We have carried out calculations on the resonant process leading to dissociative attachment and dissociative recombination. We separate the problem into two steps. First, the resonance parameters are obtained from accurate electron scattering calculations using the Complex Kohn variational method. Then these parameters are used as input to the dynamics calculations. We will illustrate the method with two examples, dissociative attachment in CO2 and dissociative recombination in O+2.

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