Vibrational excitation cross sections forF2by electron impact

Vibrational excitation cross sections for F/sub 2/ have been measured at the impact energy of 0.55--1.75 eV. The vibrational excitation process is proved to be resonant scattering via F/sub 2/ /sup -/(/sup 2/..sigma../sub u/). The obtained integrated cross section for v-italic = 0..-->..v-italic = 1 excitation at E-italic/sub i-italic/ = 1 eV is 1 x 10/sup -16/ cm/sup 2/, which is about 1 order of magnitude larger than the value given by the recent semiempirical calculation.