Coupled channel operators and rearrangement scattering. I. Comparative study of one-state s-wave e-H scattering

Abstract

Equations are derived for the amplitude density functions for the channel T matrix for rearrangement scattering. These equations are applied to electron‐hydrogen atom exchange scattering. A calculation is made in the one‐state approximation in which only the 1S state of hydrogen is considered. This calculation is compared with an earlier calculation using an alternate definition of the channel T matrix and with a number of other more complete s‐wave calculations. The new definition of the channel T matrix is shown to be superior to the earlier definition for numerical computation. The one‐state result is surprisingly accurate when compared to essentially exact variational results. This exceptional accuracy with such a limited basis is attributed to the fact that the formalism explicitly includes both the direct and the rearrangement channel descriptions.