Elastic electron scattering. I. Scattering from diatomic potentials

A method is described for calculating electron scattering cross sections from diatomic molecules. The wave function for the scattered electron is represented by a superposition of atomic scattering functions for the component atoms in the molecule plus correction terms for intramolecular multiple scattering. This formalism is applied to scattering from the nitrogen molecule at incident electron energies of 100 eV to 40 keV. The differential cross sections are consistent with the optical theorem and are smaller than the cross sections calculated in the conventional quasikinematic approximation.