Eur. Phys. J. D (2016) 70: 197
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2016-70124-7

Regular Article

Higher lying resonances in low-energy electron scattering with carbon monoxide^*

¹ Department of Chemistry, North Orissa University, 757003 Baripada, Odisha, India
² Department of Physics and Astronomy, University College London, Gower St., WC1E 6 BT London, UK
³ Department of Mathematics, Scottish Church College, 1 & 3 Urquhart Sq, 700 006 Kolkata, India

^a e-mail: j.tennyson@ucl.ac.uk

Received: 22 February 2016
Received in final form: 21 May 2016
Published online: 6 October 2016

Abstract

R-matrix calculations on electron collisions with CO are reported whose aim is to identify any higher-lying resonances above the well-reported and lowest ²Π resonance at about 1.6 eV. Extensive tests with respect to basis sets, target models and scattering models are performed. The final results are reported for the larger cc-pVTZ basis set using a 50 state close-coupling (CC) calculation. The Breit-Wigner eigenphase sum and the time-delay methods are used to detect and fit any resonances. Both these methods find a very narrow ²Σ⁺ symmetry Feshbach-type resonance very close to the target excitation threshold of the b ³Σ⁺ state which lies at 12.9 eV in the calculations. This resonance is seen in the CC calculation using cc-pVTZ basis set while a CC calculation using the cc-pVDZ basis set does not produce this feature. The electronic structure of CO⁻ is analysed in the asymptotic region; 45 molecular states are found to correlate with states dissociating to an anion and an atom. Electronic structure calculations are used to study the behaviour of these states at large internuclear separation. Quantitative results for the total, elastic and electronic excitation cross sections are also presented. The significance of these results for models of the observed dissociative electron attachment of CO in the 10 eV region is discussed.