LOW-ENERGY-ELECTRON SCATTERING FROM A MODEL H-2 POTENTIAL USING FINITE-ELEMENTS IN 2 DIMENSIONS

The Schrodinger equation for the scattering of an electron by a hydrog en molecule is solved by the finite element method, in spherical coord inates, using fifth-order Hermite interpolating polynomials. The compu tational method is quite similar to the work of Shertzer and Botero [P hys. Rev. A 49, 3673 (1994), and references therein]. However, to stud y large systems, an effective one-particle dynamical equation is defin ed, unlike the procedure of Shertzer and Botero. To illustrate the bas ic computational procedure, a model electron-H, interaction potential (static + exchange + polarization) is constructed and the K-matrix is calculated. A novel feature of the present method is the procedure for extracting the partial-wave amplitudes at a value of r, the size of w hich is fixed by the range of nonlocal potentials in the problem, and then propagating the scattering amplitudes out to an effective infinit y where the converged K-matrix is determined. (C) 1997 John Wiley & So ns, Inc.