Electron-Hydrogen Elastic Scattering

Scattering by single-electron systems is always of interest because the wave function of the target is known exactly. Various approximations have been employed to take into account distortion produced in the target. Among them are the method of polarized orbitals and the close coupling approximation. Recently, e-H and e-He+ S-wave scattering in the elastic region has been studied using the Feshbach projection operator formalism. In this approach, the usual Hartree-Fock and exchange potentials are augmented by an optical potential and the resulting phase shifts have rigorous lower bounds. Now this method is being applied to the e-H P-wave scattering in the elastic region. The number of terms in the Hylleraas-type wave function for the 1,3 P phase shifts is 84 and the resulting phase shifts (preliminary) are given. The results have been given up to five digits because to that accuracy they are rigorous lower bounds. They are in general agreement with the variational (VAR) results of Armstead, and those obtained from the intermediate energy R-matrix method (RM) of Scholz et al., and the finite element method (FEM) of Botero and Shertzer. The later two methods do not provide any bounds on phase shifts.