English

The photon scattering cross-sections of atomic hydrogen

Atomic Physics 2016-06-06 v1

Abstract

We present a unified view of the frequency dependence of the various scattering processes involved when a neutral hydrogen atom interacts with a monochromatic, linearly-polarized photon. A computational approach is employed of the atom trapped by a finite-sized-box due to a finite basis-set expansion, which generates a set of transition matrix elements between E<0E<0 eigenstates and E>0E>0 pseudostates. We introduce a general computational methodology that enables the computation of the frequency-dependent dipole transition polarizability with one real and two different imaginary contributions. These dipole transition polarizabilities are related to the cross-sections of one-photon photoionization, Rayleigh, Raman, and Compton scattering. Our numerical calculations reveal individual Raman scattering cross-sections above threshold that can rapidly vanish and revive. Furthermore, our numerical Compton cross-sections do not overtly suffer from the infra-red divergence problem, and are three orders-of-magnitude higher than previous analytic-based Compton scattering cross-sections. Our total photon-hydrogen scattering cross-sections thus resolve the discrepancies between these previous calculations and those in the N.I.S.T. `FFAST' database.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1606.00939,
  title  = {The photon scattering cross-sections of atomic hydrogen},
  author = {Swaantje J. Grunefeld and Michael W. J. Bromley and Yongjun Cheng},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1606.00939},
  year   = {2016}
}