Theoretical investigations of electron-inert gas scattering are challenging because of the complex target structure. The electron-Helium system has been the most studied both at low and intermediate energies by sophisticated R-matrix and coupled channels methods. For the other inert gases, few calculations have been attempted at the same level sophistication. One problem is that general target-structure codes provide different forms of wave functions that must be interfaced with the scattering equations. The theoretical work presented in this thesis is based on the momentum-space coupled channels equations. For this formalism only one and two-electron atoms have been studied and purpose-built routines, specific to these atoms, have been developed. For the inert gases however such a task is much more formidable and a more practical approach is to use existing structure codes that have taken several man-years to develop.
The framework of this thesis comprises of two parts. In the first part we discuss the need for, and the way to, modify the existing close-coupling code developed by Berge & Stelbovics in order to interface with other atomic structure packages in the literature. Two mainstream packages, an atomic structure package of Charlotte Froese Fischer and an atomic structure of Alan Hibbert are discussed. Methods to extract the wave functions for Helium and Neon targets using Hibbert's package are given. In the second part, various options and strategies for the calculation of the target structure, including frozen-core and configuration-interaction wave functions, using analytic Slater, Laguerre or numerical orbitals are considered for the Helium target. Hibbert's structure code wave functions are shown to be correctly interfaced into our momentum-space coupled channels code. The pros and cons of the various target structure descriptions are given and applied for lowenergy elastic and inelastic scattering of electron from Helium.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/225466 |
| Date | January 2002 |
| Creators | kaurgurd@willettonshs.wa.edu.au, Gurdeep Kaur |
| Publisher | Murdoch University |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | http://www.murdoch.edu.au/goto/CopyrightNotice, Copyright Gurdeep Kaur |
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