Continuum basis functions in the complex Kohn variational method

Abstract

We propose a different way for selecting the outgoing continuum basis functions needed in complex Kohn variational calculations of electron-molecule scattering. The proposed method is based on the recent work of Sun et al. [Phys. Rev. A 41, 4857 (1990)] dealing with dynamically prepared basis sets for algebraic variational calculations. We have found an alternative technique for removing the sensitivity to the traditional cutoff function in calculations involving ionic targets, while retaining all the computational simplicity of the complex Kohn method.