Close-coupling approach to antiproton-impact breakup of molecular hydrogen

Abstract

An ab initio time-dependent convergent close-coupling approach to describing antiproton collisions with molecular hydrogen or the hydrogen molecular ion has been developed. The approach accounts for all possible orientations of the molecular target. Averaging over the molecular orientations is performed fully analytically. For the molecular hydrogen target calculated orientation-averaged total cross sections for single ionization and proton production are compared with several experiments over the energy range of 1-2000 keV. Results for single ionization are in good agreement with experiment, except for the region around the experimental maximum. For proton production reasonable agreement with experiment is observed above 40 keV.