Eur. Phys. J. D (2014) 68: 20
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2013-40668-1

Regular Article

Elastic scattering of low-energy electrons by BF₃^*

¹ Departamento de Física, Universidade Federal do Paraná, Caixa Postal 19044, 81531-990, Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil
² Centro de Ciências Naturais e Humanas, Universidade Federal do ABC, 09210-170, Santo André, São Paulo, Brazil
³ Instituto de Física “Gleb Wataghin”, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, 13083-859, Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil

^b e-mail: bettega@fisica.ufpr.br

Received: 28 October 2013
Received in final form: 22 November 2013
Published online: 4 February 2014

Abstract

We present integral, differential and momentum transfer cross sections for elastic scattering of low-energy electrons by boron trifluoride molecules. The cross sections were obtained with the Schwinger multichannel method implemented with pseudopotentials. The calculations were performed in the static-exchange and in the static-exchange-polarization approximations for energies from 0.1 to 10 eV. Our results indicate that BF₃ has a shape resonance in the B₂ symmetry located at around 3.5 eV, in agreement with the experimental measurements of 3.8 eV, 3.54 eV and of 3.6 eV reported by [M. Tronc et al., J. Phys. B 15, L253 (1982)], by [J.A. Tossell et al., Int. J. Quantum Chem. 29, 1117 (1986)] and by [C. Szmytkowski et al., J. Chem. Phys. 121, 1790 (2004)] respectively. We also report a Ramsauer-Townsend minimum at around 0.7 eV, in conformity with the observations of [S.R. Hunter et al., J. Appl. Phys. 65, 1858 (1989); Z. Nikitović et al., Acta Phys. Polon. A 117, 748 (2010)], and [P.X. Hien et al., J. Phys. Soc. Jpn 82, 034301 (2013)]. Our elastic integral cross section is compared with calculated elastic cross sections of [J.A. Tossell et al., Int. J. Quantum Chem. 29, 1117 (1986)] and of [M. Radmilović-Radjenović et al., Publ. Astron. Obs. Belgrade 84, 57 (2008)] and with the experimental total cross section data of [C. Szmytkowski et al., J. Chem. Phys. 121, 1790 (2004)]. Although all these studies reported the presence of the shape resonance, there are some discrepancies in the magnitude and shape among the cross sections.