ROTATIONAL-EXCITATION OF HIGHLY SYMMETRICAL PLANAR TARGETS - A THEORETICAL-STUDY WITHIN AN N-CENTER SPECTATOR MODEL

State-to-state rotational transitions of planar structures forming reg ular polygons are studied within a simple spectator model, which for e lectron-diatomic molecule scattering has been found to be in excellent agreement with experiments. Selection rules in the state-to-state tra nsition probabilities for the excitation from the ground state are dis cussed. Transition probabilities for the excitation of initially rotat ing planar highly symmetric targets are derived using a new factorizat ion relation which relates the transition probabilities for initially excited states to those from the rotational ground state.