Since the turn of the 21st century, the field of electron molecule collisions has undergone a renaissance. The importance of such collisions in applications from radiation chemistry to astrochemistry has flowered, and their role in industrial processes such as plasma technology and lighting are vital to the advancement of next generation devices. F
On March 26-27, 1980, a symposium organized by one of us (P. P. ) was held at the l79th American Chemical Society National ~1eeting in Houston, Texas, under the sponsorship of the Theoretical Chemistry Subdivision of the Division of Physical Chemistry. The symposium was entitled "The Role of the Electrostatic Potential in Chemistry," and it served as a stimulus for this book. The original scope and coverage have been broadened, however; included here, in addition to contributions from the eleven invited symposium speakers and two of the poster-session participants, are four papers that were specially invited for this book. Furthermore, several authors have taken this opportunity to present at least partial reviews of the areas being discussed. Most of the manuscripts were completed in the late spring and early summer of 1980. We hope that this book will achieve two goals: First, we are trying to provide an overall picture, including recent advances, of current chemical research, both fundamental and applied, involving the electrostatic potential. Second, we want to convey an appreci ation of both the powers and also the limitations of the electro static potential approach. In order to achieve these goals, we have selected contributors whose research areas provide a very broad coverage of the field. Throughout the book, we have used a. u.
Scattering phenomena play an important role in modern physics. Many significant discoveries have been made through collision experiments. Amongst diverse kinds of collision systems, this book sheds light on the collision of an electron with a molecule. The electron-molecule collision provides a basic scattering problem. It is scattering by a nonspherical, multicentered composite particle with its centers having degrees of freedom of motion. The molecule can even disintegrate, Le., dissociate or ionize into fragments, some or all of which may also be molecules. Although it is a difficult problem, the recent theoretical, experimental, and computational progress has been so significant as to warrant publication of a book that specializes in this field. The progress owes partly to technical develop ments in measurements and computations. No less important has been the great and continuing stimulus from such fields of application as astrophysics, the physics of the earth's upper atmosphere, laser physics, radiation physics, the physics of gas discharges, magnetohydrodynamic power generation, and so on. This book aims at introducing the reader to the problem of electron molecule collisions, elucidating the physics behind the phenomena, and review ing, to some extent, up-to-date important results. This book should be appropri ate for graduate reading in physics and chemistry. We also believe that investi gators in atomic and molecular physics will benefit much from this book.
The year 2004 was a remarkable one for the growing ?eld of time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT). Not only did we celebrate the 40th - niversary of the Hohenberg-Kohn paper, which had laid the foundation for ground-state density functional theory (DFT), but it was also the 20th - niversary of the work by Runge and Gross, establishing a ?rm footing for the time-dependent theory. Because the ?eld has grown to such prominence, and has spread to so many areas of science (from materials to biochemistry), we feel that a volume dedicated to TDDFT is most timely. TDDFT is based on a set of ideas and theorems quite distinct from those governingground-stateDFT,butemployingsimilar techniques.Itisfarmore than just applying ground-state DFT to time-dependent problems, as it - volves its own exact theorems and new and di?erent density functionals. Presently,themostpopularapplicationistheextractionofelectronicexcit- state properties, especially transition frequencies. By applying TDDFT after thegroundstateofamoleculehasbeenfound,wecanexploreandunderstand the complexity of its spectrum, thus providing much more information about the species. TDDFT has a especially strong impact in the photochemistry of biological molecules, where the molecules are too large to be handled by t- ditional quantum chemical methods, and are too complex to be understood with simple empirical frontier orbital theory.
The retirement of Professor Brian Bransden was marked by a meeting on 'Atomic Scattering'. A distinguished group of speakers reviewed electron and positron scattering, as well as ion-atom collisions. The proceedings provide a timely survey of these important areas and will be valued by postgraduate students and research workers alike.
The NATO . Advanced Research Insti tute on Nonequilibrium Processes in Partially Ionized Gases was held at Acquafredda di Maratea during 4-17 June 1989. The Institute considered the interconnections between scattering and transport theories and modeling of nonequilibrium systems generated by electrical discharges, emphasizing the importance of microscopic processes in affecting the bulk properties of plasmas. The book tries to reproduce these lines. In particular several contributions describe scattering cross sections involving electrons interacting with atoms and molecules in both ground and excited states (from theoretical and experimental point of view), of energy transfer processes as well as reactive ones involving excited molecules colliding with atoms and molecules as well as with metallic surfaces. Other contributions deal with the basis of transport theories (Boltzmann and Monte Carlo methods) for describing the bulk properties of non equilibrium plasmas as well as with the modeling of complicated systems emphasizing in particular the strong coupling between the Boltzmann equation and excited state kinetics. Finally the book contains several contributions describing applications in different fields such as Excimer Lasers, Negative Ion Production, RF Discharges, Plasma Chemistry, Atmospheric Processes and Physics of Lamps. The Organizing Committee gratefully acknowledges the generous financial support provided by the NATO Science Committee as well as by Azienda Autonoma di Soggiorno e Turismo of Maratea, by University of Bari, by C. N. R. (Centro di Studio per la Chimica dei Plasmi and Comitato per la Chimica), by ENEA, by Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and by US Army Research Office.
It is hard to appreciate but nevertheless true that Michael John Seaton, known internationally for the enthusiasm and skill with which he pursues his research in atomic physics and astrophysics, will be sixty years old on the 16th of January 1983. To mark this occasion some of his colleagues and former students have prepared this volume. It contains articles that de scribe some of the topics that have attracted his attention since he first started his research work at University College London so many years ago. Seaton's association with University College London has now stretched over a period of some 37 years, first as an undergraduate student, then as a research student, and then, successively, as Assistant Lecturer, Lecturer, Reader, and Professor. Seaton arrived at University College London in 1946 to become an undergraduate in the Physics Department, having just left the Royal Air Force in which he had served as a navigator in the Pathfinder Force of Bomber Command. There are a number of stories of how his skill with instruments and the precision of his calcula tions, later to be so evident in his research, saved his crew from enemy action, and on one occasion, on a flight through the Alps, from a collision with Mount Blanc that at the time was shrouded in clouds.
