Eur. Phys. J. D (2016) 70: 179
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2016-70103-0

Regular Article

Rotational excitation of H₂ by positron impact in adiabatic rotational approximation^*

¹ Departamento de Física, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, 88040-900, Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil
² Departamento de Física, Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul, 85770-000, Realeza, Paraná, Brazil

^a e-mail: fartch@gmail.com

Received: 15 February 2016
Received in final form: 11 May 2016
Published online: 6 September 2016

Abstract

We present rotational excitation cross sections for low energy scattering of positrons by H₂, below positronium formation threshold (≈8.2 eV). The cross sections were computed from fixed-nuclei scattering amplitudes generated with the Schwinger multichannel method using the adiabatic rotational approximation. Comparison with other similar theoretical results shows that the magnitude of the cross section associated to the transition J_i = 0 → J_f = 2 is strongly affected by the methodology used to model the correlation-polarization effects.