The impact of vibrational wave function on low energy electron vibrational scattering from nitrogen molecule

The vibrational wave function of the target theoretically plays an important role in the calculation of vibrational excitation cross sections. By a careful study of the differential cross sections resulting from different vibrational wave functions we find that cross sections are susceptible to vibrational wave functions. Minor changes in the vibration wave function may cause a significant change in the cross section. Even more surprising is that by selecting a few numbers of potential models (which determine the vibrational wave functions) we can often calculate the differential scattering cross section in much closer agreement with experiment in the framework of body-frame vibrational close-coupling theory, which suggest that an accurate potential energy may play a more important role in scattering than we thought before.