Document Type
Article
Department/Program
Physics
Journal Title
Physical Review A
Pub Date
4-1986
Publisher
American Physical Society
Volume
33
Issue
4
First Page
2294
Abstract
The semiclassical local-complex-potential theory has been widely used to describe detachment and ionization in atom-atom and ion-atom collisions. However, it has been shown that the resulting formulas do not conserve probability. In this paper, we show that the problem arises from the inconsistent treatment of the effects of interference, tunneling, and diffraction. A more complete theory is based upon the close-coupling expansion, which leads to an infinite set of coupled equations. A method for solving such sets of equations was developed in earlier work. Here we implement that method using a new iterative numerical scheme, and we show that the iteration converges to results in which probability is conserved.
Recommended Citation
Du, M. L. and Delos, John B., Probability Conservation in Theories of Collisional Ionization and Detachment (1986). Physical Review A, 33(4), 2294-2301.
10.1103/PhysRevA.33.2294
DOI
10.1103/PhysRevA.33.2294
