Radiative Capture and Galilean Invariance

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Treating the radiation field as a first-order perturbation, Briggs and Dettmann recently studied radiative capture. The cross section, calculated approximately, depended on the frame of reference chosen. By use of natural nonrelativistic limit, it is shown here that if the approximate initial and final unperturbed wave functions are orthogonal—as the exact ones are—then Galilean invariance holds; otherwise, Galilean invariance is, in general, invalidated because of spurious radiation from the center of mass of the system.