HIBRIDON

Over the two decades, from an initial collaboration with David Manolopoulos of Oxford University (UK) and Hans-Joachim Werner of the University of Stuttgart (Germany) we have built up a new hybrid computer code ­ the HibridonTM package ­ for solution of the close-coupled equations which arise in the quantum description of inelastic scattering. This package combines two sophisticated propagation algorithms, both of which combine great speed and numerical stability, and has been written in a modular fashion to take advantage of fast Lapack library routines for matrix inversion, multiplication, and diagonalization which are available on most computer systems. Scattering problems involving up to ~4000 coupled channels can be solved routinely. In performance and speed, the Hibridon code is considerably superior to most, if not all, available inelastic scattering packages. A complete on-line, html-based help facility is available. We have extended the HibridonTM package to include the calculation of photo-dissociation cross sections, the determination of collisional or photodissociation flux as an aid to the understanding of the mechanism of collisions and/or photofragmentation, and the determination of energies of bound states of van der Waals molecules. (M.H. Alexander)