Critical Assessment of the Polarized-Orbital Method in Atomic Scattering

Abstract

The method of polarized orbitals used in calculating electron-atom scattering amplitudes has two obvious flaws: the wave function is discontinuous, and the method is not variationally based. These are corrected in a somewhat arbitrary manner, and it is found that the results then depend upon a parameter of the theory sufficiently strongly that there are serious doubts about the predictive nature of the theory.