Elastic Scattering of Electrons by Molecules at Intermediate Energies. II. Application to Hydrogen Molecule

Differential cross sections for elastic scattering of electrons by hydrogen molecule are calculated in the range of 50–400 eV on the basis of the potential-scattering formalism. The scattering potential consists of two static short-range potentials, deduced from Wang's wavefunction, centered at each atom and the one-center quasi-adiabatic polarization potential proposed previously. The un-certainty caused by the use of a cut-off parameter is examined. A close agreement with experimental results is obtained at 81.6 eV or higher, whereas at 50 and 75 eV calculated cross sections are considerably larger than the corresponding experimental values.