Determination of atom-molecule interaction potentials from total differential cross sections

A newly constructed crossed molecular beams apparatus has been used to measure total (elastic plus inelastic) differential cross sections for collisions between rare gas atoms and methane and chlorine molecules. The total differential cross sections were then used in an iterative trial and error potential fitting program to determine the interaction potentials between these species. In the rare gas-methane study (Chapter 2), the methane molecule has been approximated as being a spherical entity, and the standard equations and techniques have been applied to simulate the laboratory scattering distributions from an assumed isotropic potential. The isotropic potentials determined in this manner are compared with some recently proposed anisotropic potentials for these systems. In the rare gas-chlorine study (Chapter 3), anisotropic potentials have been determined using the infinite order sudden approximation and a Legendre parameter expansion of a central field potential. The resulting potentials compare rather favorably with what is known about these potential surfaces from photodissociation experiments.