A new accurate (time-independent) method for treating three-dimensional reactive collisions: The application of optical potentials and projection operators

This work describes a new (time-independent) approach to the study of atom–diatom reactive collisions in three dimensions. The method is based on the idea of converting a reactive multiarrangement problem into an inelastic single-arrangement problem. This conversion is done by applying optical potentials which are located at all exits of the reagents arrangement. The reactive transition probabilities are calculated applying flux formulas. The method is reminiscent of a previous time-dependent method successfully applied for both collinear and three-dimensional reactive collisions.