Resonant vibrational excitation of CO2 by electron impact:: Nuclear dynamics on the coupled components of the 2Πu resonance -: art. no. 042708

We report the results of a fully ab initio study of resonant vibrational excitation of CO2 by electron impact via the 3.8 eV (2)Pi(u) shape resonance. First, we solve the fixed-nuclei, electronic scattering problem using the complex Kohn variational method to produce resonance parameters for both the (2)A(1) and B-2(1) components of the resonance for a variety of symmetric-stretch geometries and for a range of bending angles. The nuclear dynamics associated with the two components of the resonance are coupled by Renner-Teller coupling. We carry out a two-mode treatment of the nuclear dynamics in a complex local potential model using the complex resonance energy surfaces derived from our calculated fixed-nuclei cross sections with Renner-Teller coupling.