Three-body analysis of electron-hydrogen atom collisions

Abstract
Electron-hydrogen atom inelastic collisions were studied as a three-body classical interaction process. The approach employed in this work differs from the previous study of the same problem of Abrines et al. (1966) in that (i) a different classical model of the undisturbed ground state hydrogen atom was employed and (ii) a systematic investigation of the cross sections was performed in place of a Monte-Carlo method. The basic feature of the model atom employed in the present work is its zero angular momentum due to the assumption of the radial motion of the atomic electron ('free-fall' trajectory). The results are compared with experiment, yielding better agreement at low energies than that obtained by Abrines et al. Some comparisons of the three-body results with the binary-encounter approximation are also given.