Coupling schemes for atom–diatom interactions and an adiabatic decoupling treatment of rotational temperature effects on glory scattering

The quantum mechanical theory for scattering of a particle by a rigid rotor is formulated in five alternative diabatic representations, corresponding to alternative coupling schemes. Use is made of a recently introduced procedure for obtaining discrete representations by artificial quantization. In order to develop an efficient computational scheme for obtaining information on the interaction potential from atom–diatom scattering experiments, decoupling approximations are developed. An adiabatic representation in the coupled states framework is applied to the computation of integral cross sections and nonadiabatic coupling effects are analyzed. The approach provides an accurate description of the experimentally observed dependence of glory scattering from the rotational temperature of the diatom.