Inelastic propagators for nonelectronic-projectile-electronic-target interactions: Analysis of the leading contributions - art. no. 052701

An analysis of the previously developed coupled propagator theory has been performed in several varieties of second-order perturbation theory. Explici t expressions for elastic and inelastic optical potentials have been derive d and compared to the standard form of the (elastic) optical potential for the scattering of nonelectronic projectiles from atoms and molecules. The e ffects of channel coupling on not only inelastic scattering but also on the elastic channel are particularly transparent in the present approximation. The formalism is suited to describe scattering from degenerate targets. A practical second-order multichannel scheme is briefly presented.