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It relates the scattered wave function with the interaction that produces the scattering (the scattering potential) and therefore allows calculation of the relevant experimental parameters (scattering amplitude and cross sections). The most fundamental equation to describe any quantum phenomenon, including scattering, is the Schrödinger equation.
The example of scattering in quantum chemistry is particularly instructive, as the theory is reasonably complex while still having a good foundation on which to build an intuitive understanding. When two atoms are scattered off one another, one can understand them as being the bound state solutions of some differential equation.
The equation was later extended to quantum scattering theory by several individuals, and came to be known as the Bohr–Peierls–Placzek relation after a 1939 paper. It was first referred to as the "optical theorem" in print in 1955 by Hans Bethe and Frederic de Hoffmann , after it had been known as a "well known theorem of optics" for some time.
The following description follows the canonical way of introducing elementary scattering theory. A steady beam of particles scatters off a spherically symmetric potential V ( r ) {\displaystyle V(r)} , which is short-ranged, so that for large distances r → ∞ {\displaystyle r\to \infty } , the particles behave like free particles.
It is used in quantum mechanics, scattering theory and quantum field theory (QFT). More formally, in the context of QFT, the S -matrix is defined as the unitary matrix connecting sets of asymptotically free particle states (the in-states and the out-states ) in the Hilbert space of physical states.
Generally in scattering theory and in particular in quantum mechanics, the Born approximation consists of taking the incident field in place of the total field as the driving field at each point in the scatterer. The Born approximation is named after Max Born who proposed this approximation in the early days of quantum theory development. [1]
In the history of quantum mechanics, the Bothe–Geiger coincidence experiment was conducted by Walther Bothe and Hans Geiger from 1924 to 1925. The experiment explored x-ray scattering from electrons to determine the nature of the conservation of energy at microscopic scales, which was contested at that time.
The Kramers–Heisenberg dispersion formula is an expression for the cross section for scattering of a photon by an atomic electron.It was derived before the advent of quantum mechanics by Hendrik Kramers and Werner Heisenberg in 1925, [1] based on the correspondence principle applied to the classical dispersion formula for light.