Dr. Rescigno's research activities are focused on the theoretical investigation of electron and photon collisions with atoms and molecules. The tools of modern computation quantum chemistry are being combined with variational scattering theory methods to provide a theoretical attack on a wide range of problems in 'Electron-Driven Chemistry'. The complex Kohn variational method has provided the framework for studying electron- and photon-collisions with a number of polyatomic targets. Of particular current interest in his group are resonant electron collisions with polyatomic molecules and the mechanisms whereby electronic energy is transferred into nuclear degrees of freedom.
Dr. Rescigno has had a long-standing interest in developing methods for obtaining scattering cross sections from calculations carried out in Hilbert space. He has concentrated on the adaptation of novel, non-traditional approaches to problems in collision physics. This has included techniques of complex analysis as well as Hilbert space methods normally associated with problems in bound-state electronic structure. Recent research efforts in his group using exterior complex scaling and massively parallel computation have led to the first solution of the long-standing problem of a complete quantum description of collisional breakup of a quantum three-body system.