DIFFERENTIAL CROSS-SECTION FOR THERMAL NA-NE SCATTERING - COMPARISON OF EXPERIMENTAL AND THEORETICAL RESULTS

The recent potentials of Masnou-Seeuws et al. (1978) are used to compute the differential cross section for Na-Ne scattering. Both close-coupling and elastic calculations are performed. The computed cross sections agree well with the experimental curve of Carter et al. (1975) provided one assumes a systematic shift on the experimental angle. The position of the rainbow maximum in the experimental excited-state cross section can be reproduced if one assumes that the well in the A 2 Pi potential is slightly deeper than the theoretical well (150 instead of 132 cm-1) but the discrepancies stays within the experimental error bar. The rapid oscillations are well reproduced by the calculations and can be interpreted in the framework of a semiclassical model as interference between A 2 Pi and B 2 Sigma scattering.