1 introduction
2 plasmas involving molecules
2.1 ionosphere
2.1.1 energy degradation of photoelectrons
2.1.2 optical emission
2.1.3 energy balance and transport phenomena in thermalelectrons
2.2 interstellar cloud
2.3 gaseous discharges
2.3.1 production and maintenance of plasmas
2.3.2 determination of electron energy distribution function
2.3.3 production of active species
2.4 fusion plasma
3 collision cross-sections and related quantities
3.1 definitions and fundamental relations
3.2 cross-section in the quantum theory
3.3 scattering from a spherical potential
3.4 one-body vs.two-body problems
3.5 experimental methods to obtain cross-sections
3.5.1 measurement of energy loss of electrons
3.5.2 detection of collision products
3.5.3 beam attenuation method
3.5.4 merged beam method
3.5.5 swarm experiment molecule as a collision partner
4.1 molecular structure and energy levels
4.2 interaction of charged particles with molecules
4.3 electron collision with a diatomic molecule
4.4 remarks on the collision with polyatomic molecules
4.5 the born approximation
5 electron collisions with molecules
5.1 collision processes
5.2 elastic scattering
5.3 momentum-transfer
5.4 rotational transition
5.5 vibrational transition
5.6 excitation of electronic state
5.7 ionization
5.8 electron attachment
5.8.1 dissociative attachment
5.8.2 three-body attachment
5.8.3 metastable negative ion
5.9 emission
5.10 dissociation
5.11 total scattering cross-section
5.12 stopping cross-section
5.13 collisions with excited molecules
6 ion collisions with molecules
6.1 characteristics of ion collisions compared with electroncollisions
6.2 momentum-transfer
6.3 inelastic scattering
6.4 reaction
7 electron collisions with molecular ions
7.1 general remarks
7.2 electron-ion recombination
7.2.1 three-body recombination
7.2.2 dissociative recombination
8 summary of the roles of the molecular processes in plasmas
a order of magnitude of macroscopic quantities
b molecular properties
c atomic units and evaluation of the born cross-section
c.1 definition of atomic units
c.2 example of the calculation of the born cross-section forrotational transitions
c.3 example of the calculation of the born cross-section forvibrational transitions
d cross-section sets for h2, n2, h20, and co2
e how to find cross-section data
e.1 data compilations in printed form
e.2 journals exclusively focused on atomic and molecular data
e.3 online database
e.4 review papers
e.5 conference
f data compilations for electron-molecule collisions
g data compilations for ion-molecule reactions and relatedprocesses
references
index