2020/02/06 by Scott E. Hoffmann, Hoffmann, Scott E.
Computer Science · Materials Science · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Computational physics #Coulomb #Displacement (psychology) #Electronic and Structural Properties of Oxides #FOS: Physical sciences #Geometry #Impact parameter #Inelastic scattering #Mathematics #Momentum (technical analysis) #Perpendicular #Physics #Quantum Information and Cryptography #Quantum Physics (quant-ph) #Quantum mechanics #Rutherford scattering #Scattering #Shadow (psychology) #Wave packet #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2002.02047
11 pages, 6 figures
arxiv created 2020/02/06 · openalex publication_date 2020/02/06 · arxiv updated 2020/02/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
A previous paper [J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 50, 215302 (2017)] showed that partial wave analysis becomes applicable to nonrelativistic Coulomb scattering if wavepackets are used. The scattering geometry considered was special: that of a head-on collision between the wavepacket and the centre of the potential. Our results predicted, in this case, a shadow zone of low probability for small angles around the forward direction for the description of alpha scattering from a gold foil. In this paper we generalize the results to the case of a nonzero impact parameter, a displacement of the wavepacket centre perpendicular to the average momentum direction. We predict a large flux in the forward direction from events with large impact parameters. We find a significant probability of scattering into the deviation region for impact parameters of order the spatial width of the wavepacket. Averaging over impact parameters produces predictions in excellent agreement with the Rutherford formula down to lower angles than for the zero impact parameter prediction. We consider issues that would arise in a real experiment and discuss the possibility of measuring a deviation from the Rutherford formula.