Description
Liquid metal divertor systems are being developed for magnetic confinement tokamak fusion devices to counteract the damage sustained by typical solid designs due to bombardment from the fusion plasma. Lithium is one of the leading candidate metals for use in these systems. Due to the seeding of lithium into the fusion plasma, LiH molecules form in the edge region. Accurate collision data is required to model the impact of these impurity molecules on the tokamak’s performance.
A comprehensive dataset of cross sections for electron scattering from the $v=0$ to 20 vibrational levels of the ground $X\,^1\Sigma^+$ state of $^7$LiH has been calculated using the molecular convergent close-coupling method. This includes vibrationally-resolved excitation cross sections for transitions to the $a\,^3\Sigma^+$, $A\,^1\Sigma^+$, $b\,^3\Pi$, and $B\,^1\Pi$ states, including account of dissociative excitation. The total electronically-bound excitation cross sections and mean excitation energies for each initial vibrational level are also presented. Results have been calculated for incident electron energies up to 500 eV. A model-potential approach is used to represent $^7$LiH as a quasi-two-electron system above a frozen core, and configuration-interaction calculations are performed to obtain the valence states. Comparison is made with previous results, and good agreement is found with first-order calculations only at high incident electron energies.
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