A reactive, two-state, curve-crossing study. A comparison between exact, distorted wave Born approximation, and Landau-Zener results

Abstract

A ‘reactive’ two-state curve-crossing study is presented. The exact numerical results are compared with those obtained by applying various types of DWBA and the Landau-Zener approximation. It was found that a DWBA based on the uniform Airy functions correctly predicts the structure of the transition probability function (mainly the positions of the maxima and the minima) for all cases considered here. The Landau-Zener approximation was found to be equal to the various DWBA's for small coupling terms (except for low collision energies), but superior for large coupling terms.