The impact of the multichannel coupling effect on the description of electron scattering by isoprene molecules

In this paper, we report on integral, differential, and momentum-transfer cross sections for elastic and electronically inelastic scattering of electrons by the isoprene molecule. Excitation functions for the elastic scattering of electrons by isoprene are also presented for the angles of 45°, 60°, 90°, 120°, and 135°. The scattering amplitudes were obtained using the Schwinger multichannel method implemented with norm-conserving pseudopotentials for energies ranging from 0 to 50 eV. These calculations were performed according to the minimal orbital basis for single configuration interaction strategy at an up to 147-channel close-coupling level of approximation and were carried out to investigate the influence of the multichannel coupling effect upon the description of elastic and electronically inelastic electron collisions by the isoprene molecule. From the results obtained in this work, we found that as the level of channel coupling through which the calculations were performed increases, a significant reduction in the magnitude of the cross sections is observed. We also present the total ionization cross section obtained using the binary-encounter-Bethe model. Finally, by summing the binary-encounter-Bethe ionization cross section with present elastic and electronically inelastic cross sections, we provide an estimate of the total cross section for electron scattering by the isoprene molecule.