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Here we investigate ground and metastable negative ion formation inlow-energy electron collisions with the actinide atoms Th, Pa, U, Np and Puthrough the elastic total cross sections (TCSs) calculations. For these atoms,the presence of two or more open d- and f- subshell electrons presents aformidable computational task for conventional theoretical methods, making itdifficult to interpret the calculated results. Our robust Regge polemethodology which embeds the crucial electron correlations and the vitalcore-polarization interaction is used for the calculations. These are the majorphysical effects mostly responsible for stable negative ion formation inlow-energy electron scattering from complex heavy systems. We find that theTCSs are characterized generally by Ramsauer-Townsend minima, shape resonancesand dramatically sharp resonances manifesting ground and metastable negativeion formation during the collisions. The extracted from the ground states TCSsanionic binding energies (BEs) are found to be 3.09 eV, 2.98 eV, 3.03 eV, 3.06eV and 3.25 eV for Th, Pa, U, Np and Pu, respectively. Interestingly, anadditional polarization-induced metastable TCS with anionic BE value of 1.22 eVis created in Pu due to the size effect. We also found that our excited statesanionic BEs for several of these atoms compare well with the existingtheoretical electron affinities including those calculated using therelativistic configuration-interaction method. We conclude that the existingtheoretical calculations tend to identify incorrectly the BEs of the resultantexcited anionic states with the electron affinities of the investigatedactinide atoms; this suggests a need for an unambiguous definition of electronaffinity.

Low-energy electron scattering from atomic Th, Pa, U, Np and Pu: Negative ion formation