Scattering amplitude

In quantum physics, the scattering amplitude is the probability amplitude of the outgoing spherical wave relative to the incoming plane wave in a stationary-state scattering process.^[1]

The latter is described by the wavefunction

\psi ({\mathbf {r}})=e^{{ikz}}+f(\theta ){\frac {e^{{ikr}}}{r}}\;,

where ${\mathbf {r}}\equiv (x,y,z)$ is the position vector; $r\equiv |{\mathbf {r}}|$ ; $e^{{ikz}}$ is the incoming plane wave with the wavenumber $k$ along the $z$ axis; $e^{{ikr}}/r$ is the outgoing spherical wave; $θ$ is the scattering angle; and $f(\theta )$ is the scattering amplitude. The dimension of the scattering amplitude is length.

The scattering amplitude is a probability amplitude; the differential cross-section as a function of scattering angle is given as its modulus squared,

{\frac {d\sigma }{d\Omega }}=|f(\theta )|^{2}\;.

Partial wave expansion

In the partial wave expansion the scattering amplitude is represented as a sum over the partial waves,^[2]

f=\sum _{{\ell =0}}^{\infty }(2\ell +1)f_{\ell }P_{\ell }(\cos \theta )

,

where $f ℓ$ is the partial scattering amplitude and $P ℓ$ are the Legendre polynomials.

The partial amplitude can be expressed via the partial wave S-matrix element $S ℓ$ ( $=e^{{2i\delta _{\ell }}}$ ) and the scattering phase shift $δ ℓ$ as

f_{\ell }={\frac {S_{\ell }-1}{2ik}}={\frac {e^{{2i\delta _{\ell }}}-1}{2ik}}={\frac {e^{{i\delta _{\ell }}}\sin \delta _{\ell }}{k}}={\frac {1}{k\cot \delta _{\ell }-ik}}\;.

Then the differential cross section is given by^[3]

{\frac {d\sigma }{d\Omega }}=|f(\theta )|^{2}={\frac {1}{k^{2}}}\left|\sum _{{\ell =0}}^{\infty }(2\ell +1)e^{{i\delta _{\ell }}}\sin \delta _{\ell }P_{\ell }(\cos \theta )\right|^{2}

,

and the total elastic cross section becomes

\sigma =2\pi \int _{0}^{\pi }{\frac {d\sigma }{d\Omega }}\sin \theta \,d\theta ={\frac {4\pi }{k}}\operatorname {Im}f(0)

,

where $Im f (0)$ is the imaginary part of $f (0)$ .

X-rays

The scattering length for X-rays is the Thomson scattering length or classical electron radius, $r$ ₀.

Neutrons

The nuclear neutron scattering process involves the coherent neutron scattering length, often described by $b$ .

Quantum mechanical formalism

A quantum mechanical approach is given by the S matrix formalism.

Measurement

The scattering amplitude can be determined by the scattering length in the low-energy regime.

References

^ Quantum Mechanics: Concepts and Applications Archived 2010-11-10 at the Wayback Machine By Nouredine Zettili, 2nd edition, page 623. ISBN 978-0-470-02679-3 Paperback 688 pages January 2009
^ Michael Fowler/ 1/17/08 Plane Waves and Partial Waves
^ Schiff, Leonard I. (1968). Quantum Mechanics. New York: McGraw Hill. pp. 119–120.

[1] Quantum Mechanics: Concepts and Applications Archived 2010-11-10 at the Wayback Machine By Nouredine Zettili, 2nd edition, page 623. ISBN 978-0-470-02679-3 Paperback 688 pages January 2009

[2] Michael Fowler/ 1/17/08 Plane Waves and Partial Waves

[Schiff1968-3] Schiff, Leonard I. (1968). Quantum Mechanics. New York: McGraw Hill. pp. 119–120.

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