Statistical-law formulas for zero- to two-electron-transfer probabilities in proton-molecule and proton cancer therapy reactions from electron nuclear dynamics theory.

We present the first quantum-mechanical derivation of statistical-law formulas to calculate zero- to two-electron transfers (ETs) in proton-molecule reactions. The original statistical derivation assumed that the n-ET probabilities of N electrons in a shell obey an N-trial binomial distribution with success probability equal to an individual one-ET probability; the latter was heuristically identified with the number of transferred electrons from the integrated charge density. The obtained formulas proved accurate to calculate ET cross sections in proton-molecule and proton cancer therapy (PCT) reactions. We adopt the electron nuclear dynamics (END) theory in our quantum-mechanical derivation due to its versatile description of ETs via a Thouless single-determinantal state. Since non-orthogonal Thouless dynamical spin-orbitals pose mathematical difficulties, we first present a derivation for a model system with N ≥ 2 electrons where only two with opposite spins are ET active; in that scheme, the Thouless dynamical spin-orbitals become orthogonal, a fact that facilitates a still intricate derivation. In the end, we obtain the number of transferred electrons from the Thouless state charge density and the ETs probabilities from the Thouless state resolution into projectile-molecule eigenstates describing ETs. We prove that those probabilities and numbers of electrons interrelate as in the statistical-law formulas via their common dependency on the Thouless variational parameters. We review past ET results of proton-molecule and PCT reactions obtained with these formulas in the END framework and present new results of H+ + N2O. We will present the derivation for systems with N > 2 electrons all active for ETs in a sequel.