The classical theory of charge transfer and ionisation processes in collisions between complex atomic ions

Abstract
The classical theory of charge transfer and ionisation of hydrogen atoms by protons, first developed by Abrines and Percival (1966), is extended to the case in which the interactions between the three particles are not of pure Coulomb type. The model adopted is one in which only the active electron is treated explicitly; the two residual atomic ions are considered to be simply polarisable cores. The two-body interactions are represented by semiempirical central potentials and additional three-body terms are included in order to allow fully for polarisation.