An ab initio calculation of electron impact vibrational excitation of NO⁺

An ab initio calculation, using the R-matrix method, of the cross sections for the electron impact vibrational excitation of NO⁺(X ¹⁺,v = 0) up to v = 5 is presented. Calculations have been carried out in both an adiabatic and a non-adiabatic approximation. It is shown that these two approximations produce dramatically different results. This is due to the effect of low-lying Feshbach resonances which can only be treated correctly using the non-adiabatic approach. Rates for vibrational excitation are also presented.