An Exact Second-Order Theory and its Application to Electron-Hydrogen Excitation

Abstract

Recent technological advances have produced increasingly detailed experimental measurements. These results have often revealed problems associated with the standard first-order perturbation series theoretical approaches. For several scattering problems, it is becoming evident that a good second-order theory is needed. However, theoretical calculations of second-order amplitudes typically resort to several simplifying approximations to make the calculation tractable. A new approach is developed which reduces the exact evaluation of a second-order amplitude to a tractable form. The utility of the method is demonstrated through a practical calculation of the exact second-order distorted-wave amplitude for electron excitation of the 2p state of hydrogen. For this case, the second-order results are in significantly better agreement with experimental data than the first-order results.

Department(s)

Physics

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

0022-3700

Document Type

Article - Journal

Document Version

Citation

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 1985 Institute of Physics (IOP), All rights reserved.

Publication Date

01 Sep 1985

Link to Full Text

Share

 
COinS