Classical Scattering Theory. Elastic Collisions

Abstract

The methods of Prigogine and Resibois are used to construct a description of classical two‐body scattering events which bears a close formal analogy to that of time‐dependent quantum‐scattering theory. It is shown how the distribution in phase space evolves after long times into a steady‐state scattering form, from which expressions for cross sections and transition rates are obtained by means similar to those of the quantum‐mechanical treatment. These expressions are shown to be equivalent to the conventional classical formulas but offer in principle alternative means of evaluation.