Calculated Elastic Scattering Cross Sections for the Li+–He System

Calculations of the energy dependence of the total (and differential) elastic scattering cross sections for the Li+–He system have been carried out for a number of assumed interaction potentials taken from the literature. All of these are known to yield fairly good fits to existing mobility data, sensitive primarily to the long-range (r−4) term in the potential. The present results show that the total quantum cross sections (as well as the angular distributions) are also quite sensitive to the potential at short range (e.g., r<4 Å), even at low collision energies (E<1 eV). In particular, the behavior of the extrema in the energy dependence of the total cross sections offers a means of discrimination among the potentials.