SCATTERING OF AN ELECTRON BY AN ATOM AND REARRANGEMENT COLLISIONS

Abstract

For the problem of the scattering of an electron by a hydrogen atom, the complete equivalence is shown of the treatment of Trainor and Wu based on symmetry considerations and that of Altshuler giving a direct proof of the method of Mott and Massey. A generalization of the treatment of Altshuler to scattering processes involving non-identical particles or other rearrangement collisions is made. Also, the usual treatment involving matrix elements for transitions between states belonging to two different Hamiltonians is discussed and justified. Finally, the recent treatment by Dirac of rearrangement collisions is discussed, and it is shown that a correct formulation of the method and interpretation of the result give exactly the same result as in the usual treatment.