Elastic electron scattering from ortho-, meta-, and paraxylenes, C8H10

Ab initio calculations and normalized experimental measurements of the differential, momentum transfer and integral cross sections for vibrationally elastic scattering of low-energy electrons from orthoxylene, metaxylene, and paraxylene are presented. The calculated cross sections are obtained using the Schwinger multichannel method implemented with norm-conserving pseudopotentials. The differential cross sections are measured at incident energies from 1 to 30 eV and scattering angles from 10(circle) to 130(circle). These cross sections are compared to experimental results for toluene. The comparisons illuminate the role of molecular structure in determining the integral cross sections and the angular distributions of resonantly scattered electrons.