# Inelastic low-energy collisions of electrons with HeH$^+$: rovibrational excitation and dissociative recombination

## TL;DR

This paper theoretically investigates low-energy electron collisions with HeH$^+$, focusing on rovibrational excitation and dissociative recombination, using multichannel quantum defect theory and comparing different reference frames.

## Contribution

It applies ab initio MQDT to model electron-HeH$^+$ collisions, analyzing the effects of different reference frames and elucidating the roles of rotational and vibrational excitations in dissociation.

## Key findings

- Good agreement with theoretical rotational rate coefficients.
- Computed DR rates align with experimental data.
- Vibrational excitations significantly increase dissociation probability.

## Abstract

Inelastic low-energy (0--1 eV) collisions of electrons with HeH$^+$ cations are treated theoretically, with a focus on the rovibrational excitation and dissociative recombination (DR) channels. In an application of {\it ab initio} multichannel quantum defect theory (MQDT), the description of both processes is based on the Born-Oppenheimer quantum defects. The quantum defects were determined using the R-matrix approach in two different frames of reference: the center-of-charge and the center-of-mass frames. The results obtained in the two reference systems, after implementing the Fano-Jungen style rovibrational frame-transformation technique, shows differences in the rate of convergence for these two different frames of reference. We find good agreement with the available theoretically predicted rotationally inelastic thermal rate coefficients. Our computed DR rate also agrees well with available experimental results. Moreover, several computational experiments shed light on the role of rotational and vibrational excitations in the indirect DR mechanism that governs the low energy HeH$^+$ dissociation process. While the rotational excitation is several orders of magnitude more probable process at the studied collision energies, the closed-channel resonances described by the high-n, rotationally excited neutral molecules of HeH contribute very little to the dissociation probability. But the situation is very different for resonances defined by the high-n, vibrationally excited HeH molecules, which are found to dissociate with approximately 90% probability.