Spin exchange in elastic e-O2 collisions

Study of Electron and Positron Elastic Scattering from Hydrogen Sulphide Using Analytically Obtained Static Potential

A detailed study of elastic scattering of electrons and positrons from a hydrogen sulphide (H2S) molecule is presented using the method of partial wave phase shift analysis with suitably chosen complex optical potentials. The important aspect of our present work is that we uniquely obtain static potential in an analytical form and use it along with exchange (only for electron), polarization and purely imaginary absorption potentials to define the complex optical potential. The static potential is evaluated by obtaining charge density from the H2S molecule using the molecular wavefunction represented through an accurate analytical form of the Gaussian orbitals. The primary aim of our study is to test our present approach, as applied to the electron and positron scattering from H2S. Therefore, the results for electron and positron impact differential, integral, momentum-transfer, absorption and total cross sections are obtained for the incident energies in the range of 10–500 eV. Comparisons of these different types of cross section results with the available measurements and other calculations show good agreement, which suggests the applicability of our present approach.

Spin-exchange-induced circularly polarized molecular fluorescence

We have measured the circular polarization of light emitted from both atomic H and molecular H2 after bombarding H2 with longitudinally polarized electrons. For both atomic and molecular fluorescence near threshold we observe a circular polarization as great as 10% of the electron polarization. This represents the first direct observation of spin transfer in electron-molecule collisions.