Elastic electron scattering from nitrobenzene.

We present integral, momentum transfer, and differential cross sections for an elastic scattering of electrons by nitrobenzene. Our calculations employed the Schwinger multichannel method with pseudopotentials and were performed in the static-exchange and static-exchange plus polarization approximations. The cross sections were computed for impact energies up to 10 eV. We observed four resonances in the static-exchange calculations, and three when polarization effects were included. This result indicates that the low-lying resonance in the B1 symmetry of C2v group, observed in the static-exchange calculation, became a bound state when polarization was taken into account. Our calculations including polarization effects assigned the low-lying resonance located at 0.92 eV to the A2 symmetry and the other two resonances, located at 2.07 eV and 6 eV, to the B1 symmetry. These results compare well with the attachment energies obtained through electron transmission spectroscopy data and with dissociative electron attachment results for the NO2- sub-product, suggesting for the latter that the π* resonances mediate the dissociation process.