Abstract
The effect of short range interactions on the rotational excitations of CO and NO molecules by low energy electron impact has been considered by applying the Born approximation. The incident energy has been taken to be below 0.1 eV so that the Born approximation should hold reasonably well. For CO, it is found that even at such low incident electron energies, the short-range interactions have significant effect on the rotational excitations involving Delta j=+or-1 and +or-2. The agreement with the experimental value of the total rotational transition cross section Q for the initial rotational state j=4 becomes better when the short-range interactions are included in addition to the electron-dipole and electron-quadrupole forces. For NO, the effect of short-range interactions is less than that for CO molecule.

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