INELASTIC TRANSITION PROBABILITIES AND THEIR ROLE IN QUENCHING OF GLORY EXTREMA IN ATOM-DIATOMIC SCATTERING

Rotational inelastic transitions in atom-diatomic collisions have been investigated via several approximation treatments. In the high-velocity limit the restricted distorted-wave approximation (RDWA) yields transition probabilities P(j→j′), in agreement with the first-order sudden approximation at all impact parameters. Calculations of P(j→j′) at the glory impact parameter by the RDWA (further reduced by incorporating the Born approximation) agreed well with computations by the full distorted-wave procedure (over a wide range of energies and anisotropy parameters). In the pure distorted-wave treatment no glory quenching arises due to inelastic effects; however, in higher-order approximations inelastic quenching becomes important. By the use of a renormalized distorted-wave procedure (designed to preserve the unitarity of the 5 matrix) an improved equation for P(j→j′) is developed, leading to a quenching formula equivalent to that of Cross (based upon the high-velocity limit of his infinite-order" distorted-wave treatment)."