High order Correlation polarization potential for vibrational excitation scattering of diatomic molecules by low-energy electrons

This paper introduces a correlation--polarization potentialwith high order terms for vibrational excitation inelectron--molecule scattering. The new polarization potential generalizes the two-term approximation so that it can better reflect the dependence of correlation and polarization effects on the position coordinate of the scattering electron. It applies the new potential on the vibrational excitation scattering from N₂ in an energy range which includes the ²П_g shape resonance. The good agreement of theoretical resonant peaks with experiments shows that polarization potentials with high order terms are important and should be included in vibrational excitation scattering.