Regular Article

Electron-impact dissociation of molecular hydrogen into neutral fragments^★

¹ Curtin Institute for Computation and Department of Physics, Astronomy and Medical Radiation Sciences, Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia 6102, Australia
² School of Physics, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, Western Australia 6009, Australia
³ Theoretical Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA

^a e-mail: liam.scarlett@student.curtin.edu.au

Received: 10 October 2017
Received in final form: 13 December 2017
Published online: 8 February 2018

Abstract

We present convergent close-coupling calculations of electron-impact dissociation of the ground state of molecular hydrogen into neutral fragments over the range of impact energies from 6 to 300 eV. The calculations account for dissociative excitation, excitation radiative decay dissociation, and predissociation through all bound electronic triplet states, and singlet states up to the D′ ¹Π_u state. An estimate is given for the contribution from the remaining bound electronic singlet states. Our results are in agreement with the recommended data of Yoon et al. [J. Phys. Chem. Ref. Data 37, 913 (2008)] in the low (6–12 eV) and high (60–70 eV) energy regions, but somewhat lower at the intermediate energies.