Atom–diatom scattering: An extension of the field theoretic approach and a computational assessment

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Abstract
In a recent paper the problem of atom–diatom scattering has been approached with a field‐theoretic formalism and an approximation scheme has been suggested for the optical and transition potentials, presiding elastic and inelastic processes, respectively. On the basis of experience gained from preliminary calculations, higher order approximations have been derived in this paper for the above mentioned effective potentials. New computations have been performed for a collinear collision model, with an exponential repulsive interaction potential and a harmonic oscillator representation for the molecule. The results obtained agree very well to the exact values of Secrest and Johnson, also for choices of the parameters where other approximate quantum mechanical treatments completely fail, suggesting that, in this extended scheme, the field theoretic scattering equations could be confidently applied to realistic three‐dimensional computations.