Elastic scattering of low-energy electrons from ammonia

Abstract

The authors report absolute differential cross-section measurements for vibrationally elastic electron scattering from NH3 at incident energies from 2-30 eV. The present results, from a crossed electron-molecular beam apparatus, represent the first comprehensive experimental attempt to quantify the elastic electron-NH3 scattering process. At each energy studied they have integrated their differential cross-section data to generate total elastic and elastic momentum transfer cross sections and a critical comparison of both their differential and integral cross sections against previous experiment and theory is provided. They also report their observation of a strong Feshbach resonance in the elastic channel at energy of 5.59+or-0.05 eV.