TIME-DEPENDENT WAVE-PACKET DESCRIPTION OF DISSOCIATIVE ELECTRON-ATTACHMENT

A time-dependent description of the dissociative-attachment process is formulated within the frame-work of the projection-operator formalism of scattering theory. A generally applicable computational scheme for the solution of the resulting integro-differential equation of motion is developed. The concepts and computational techniques are illustrated for a model of a d-wave shape resonance as well as for the p-wave 2SIGMA(u)+ shape resonance in electron-H-2 Collisions. It is shown that the time-dependent wave-packet picture yields qualitative insight into the dynamics of the dissociative-attachment reaction. The origin of the complete failure of the local-complex-potential approximation for the 2SIGMA(u)+ resonance in e + H-2 becomes apparent in the time-dependent picture.