Angular dependence of dissociative attachment to polar molecules

The theory of the angular dependence of dissociative attachment in electron-molecule collisions by O'Malley and Taylor (1968) is reformulated to take the anisotropic of the electron-molecule interaction into account. In the case of a polar molecule, the direct electron-molecule scattering is expanded over dipolar angular modes (solutions of the angular part of the electron-point-dipole interaction problem). The angular dependence of the dissociative attachment is then expressed as a superposition of dipolar angular modes. Examples are presented for targets with various dipole moments (HF, HCl, H2O, H2S and NaCl); the experimental angular distributions are found to be well accounted for by dipolar angular modes.