Elastic electron scattering from A@C-n (A = Ca, Mg, n=60, 20)

We report on elastic electron scattering cross sections from Ca and Mg confined by C-60 and C-20 using the optical potential method. We demonstrate the diffuse effect caused by a fullerene cage upon the elastic electron scattering process by employing a commonly used square-well potential and the recentlyab initiocalculated continuousness electrostatic potential. For Ca@C-60, we found that the differential cross sections calculated by the continuousness electrostatic potential model are compatible with the square-well potential model while the square-well potential model tends to overestimate the integrated cross section than the continuousness electrostatic potential model. Results of electron collision from Mg@C-20 have shown big discrepancies exist in both of the differential and integrated cross sections between two potentials, which implies that a newab initiocalculated electrostatic potential model should be preferred in future works. Moreover, the elastic scattering cross sections from Ca of the Ca-+/- z@C-60(-/+ z) have been calculated for the first time.