Absorptive Part of Charge Polarization Corrections for Electron Scattering in the Kiloelectron Volt Energy Range

The calculation of the effect of the absorptive part of charge polarization on elastic electron scattering is investigated in the second Born approximation using closure in an approximate manner. Errors in a previous study are corrected, and the angular dependence of the polarization correction is found to be strongly peaked in the forward direction with a long tail at large s values which makes a significant contribution to the scattering. The effects of the polarization correction on the scattered intensity and on the phase of the scattered amplitude are discussed in view of experimental observations. Results for the case of elastic electron scattering from Xe are found to be in good agreement with experiment. Corrections to the diffraction measurement of chemical binding energies of molecules containing first-row elements appear to be negligible.