Vibrational excitation and dissociative attachment in low-energy scattering from diatomic molecules

Based on the Feshbach projection-operator formalism a method for calculating angle-integrated and resonant cross sections for vibrational excitation and dissociative attachment of diatomic molecules by low-energy electrons is developed. The method allows for a treatment of the non-local character of the scattering potentials. The basic formulae reduce to a set of linear equations. As a first example the HCl molecule is considered using model potentials. The calculated cross sections are found to be in good agreement with the results of an exact solution of the model problem.