Electron capture at relativistic energies
- 14 October 1979
- journal article
- Published by IOP Publishing in Journal of Physics B: Atomic and Molecular Physics
- Vol. 12 (19) , L591-L595
- https://doi.org/10.1088/0022-3700/12/19/001
Abstract
The theory of electron capture into the ground state from ground-state hydrogen atoms by high-energy incident protons is generalised to allow for relativistic effects arising from the high velocity of relative motion of the particles involved in the collision and from the use of Dirac wavefunctions for the atomic electron. The Oppenheimer-Brinkman-Kramers approximation is employed to obtain scattering amplitudes for capture without and with change of electron spin. Simple but accurate analytical expressions for the OBK capture cross sections are derived by expanding in powers of the fine-structure constant. At extremely high energies the capture cross sections are found to decay slowly as Ekin-1, where Ekin is the kinetic energy of the incident proton, in accordance with the result previously obtained by Mittleman (1964).Keywords
This publication has 3 references indexed in Scilit:
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- Electron Capture by 40-, 155-, and 600-MeV Protons in Thin Foils of Mylar, Al, Ni, and TaPhysical Review A, 1971
- Relativistic effects in charge transferProceedings of the Physical Society, 1964