AN ADIABATIC EXPONENTIAL PERTURBATION-THEORY FOR ROTATIONALLY INELASTIC-SCATTERING

We develop a perturbation theory to treat rotationally inelastic scatt ering using an adiabatic basis set. The results for Ar+N-2 are twice a s accurate as those using a diabatic basis set. The theory can be triv ially extended to include closed channels. It can also be simply recas t into the exact integration of a set of semiclassical coupled equatio ns. In this mode it agrees to better than 1% with the exact quantal re sults. (C) 1997 American Institute of Physics.