Effective one-electron approach to proton collisions with molecular hydrogen

The two-centre wave-packet convergent close-coupling approach to ion–atom collisions is extended to study proton collisions with molecular hydrogen including electron-capture channels. We use a model potential to represent the molecular target as an effective one-electron spherically symmetric system. This greatly simplifies the target structure, allowing us to use already existing code developed for ion collisions with single-electron targets. Calculated total cross sections for electron capture, single ionisation, and excitation processes generally agree well with experimental data and other theoretical calculations where available. However, the total electron capture cross section is found to overestimate the experimental data at low energies, while the total ionisation cross section is slightly underestimated. Additionally, we present state-resolved cross sections for capture into the 1s, 2$$\ell $$, and 3$$\ell $$ states of the projectile where deviation between various previous calculations is substantial. Our results lead to overall improvement over previous theoretical studies although discrepancies with experiment are observed for 3p and 3d capture. We conclude that treating molecular hydrogen as an effective one-electron system within the two-centre coupled-channel approach to one-electron targets can give reasonably accurate total cross sections at intermediate and high energies, without the need for a complex and computationally demanding two-electron target representation