Characterization of the intermolecular potential well from elastic molecular beam scattering data

Abstract

The spacings of the glory extrema in the velocity dependence of the total elastic cross sections for atom-atom scattering are analyzed in terms of several recently-proposed analytical forms for the argon-argon and neon-neon pair potentials of intermolecular force. In order to subject these new potential forms to more stringent tests, we compare our calculations with experimental data on argon-argon scattering. Our findings are that a series of potentials developed by Barker and his collaborators to fit macroscopic properties of argon are reasonably consistent with the positions of the glory extrema, and that the so-called MSV potentials proposed by Parson, Siska and Lee to fit their differential scattering cross-section measurements on argon are somewhat less consistent.