Theoretical studies of charged particle collisions

Results from quantum mechanical ab initio studies on mutual neutralization in collision of H⁺ with H⁻ and ${{\rm{H}}}_{2}^{+}$ with H⁻ are reported. The theoretical studies require computations of the potentials as well as the non-adiabatic interactions among highly excited electronic states. The electronic states are transformed to a diabatic representation and the coupled radial Schrödinger equation is solved using a logarithmic derivative method. For ${{\rm{H}}}_{2}^{+}$ collisions with H⁻, the process is studied using reduced dimensionality. Calculated cross sections and final state distributions are compared with measurements.