The³Peresonance in the low-energy scattering of electrons by atomic nitrogen

The low-energy total elastic cross section for electrons scattered by atomic nitrogen is calculated using the R-matrix method. The wavefunction includes all terms of the ground 1s 2 2s 2 2p 3 configuration as well as a 4 P e pseudo-state determined to represent the full atomic ground state polarizability and additional states to represent short-range correlation effects. The low-energy 1s 2 2S 2 2p 4 3 P e shape resonance is found to have E r =0.062 eV and Gamma =0.013 eV and to dominate the cross section below 0.5 eV.