Collision cross-section conservation

Due to the long range of the Coulomb interaction, the definition of the collision cross section requires some attention. By solving coupled equations for the conservation of energy and momentum for two colliding particles of identical charge, the deflection angle (p can be obtained as a function of the collision parameter b as follows ... 

With energy conservation, E. = Ej.+ (Sj.- e )=E + ethe cross section for superelastic collisions E > Ep... 

The probability for a particular electron collision process to occur is expressed in tenns of the corresponding electron-impact cross section n which is a function of the energy of the colliding electron. All inelastic electron collision processes have a minimum energy (tlireshold) below which the process cannot occur for reasons of energy conservation. In plasmas, the electrons are not mono-energetic, but have an energy or velocity distribution,/(v). In those cases, it is often convenient to define a rate coefficient /cfor each two-body collision process ... 

Now encounters between molecules, or between a molecule and the wall are accompanied by momentuin transfer. Thus if the wall acts as a diffuse reflector, molecules colliding wlch it lose all their axial momentum on average, so such encounters directly change the axial momentum of each species. In an intermolecuLar collision there is a lateral transfer of momentum to a different location in the cross-section, but there is also a net change in total momentum for species r if the molecule encountered belongs to a different species. Furthermore, chough the total momentum of a particular species is conserved in collisions between pairs of molecules of this same species, the successive lateral transfers of momentum associated with a sequence of collisions may terminate in momentum transfer to the wall. Thus there are three mechanisms by which a given species may lose momentum in the axial direction ... 

For multichannel scattering where there are two or more open channels, the S matrix is a true matrix with elements Sy and the cross section for the transition from channel i to channel j is proportional to 5y - Sy 2. The symmetry of collision processes with respect to the time reversal leads to the symmetric property of the S matrix, ST = S, which, in turn, leads to the principle of detailed balance between mutually reverse processes. The conservation of the flux of probability density for a real potential and a real energy requires that SSf = SfS = I, i.e., S is unitary. For a complex energy or for a complex potential, in general, the flux is not conserved and S is non-unitary. 

In Hamiltonian mechanics the LiouviUe s law for elastic collisions represents an alternative way of formulating Lionville s theorem stating that phase space volnmes are conserved as it evolves in time [61] [43]. Since time-evolntion is a canonical transformation, it follows that when the Jacobian is unity the differential cross sections of the original, reverse and inverse collisions are all equal. Prom this result we conclude that (7a(SJ) = (7a(SJ ) [83] [28] [105]. 

The integration of this set of coupled first-order differential equation can be done in a number of ways. Care must be taken since there are basically rather two different time scales involved, i.e. that of the nuclear dynamics and that of the normally considerably faster electron dynamics. It should be observed that this END takes place in a Cartesian laboratory reference frame, which means that the overall translation as well as overall rotation of the molecular system is included. This offers no complications since the equations of motion satisfy basic conservation laws and, thus, total momentum and angular momentum are conserved. At any time in the evolution of the molecular system can the overall translation be isolated and eliminated if so should be deemed necessary. This level of theory [16,19] is implemented in the program system ENDyne [20], and has been applied to atomic and molecular reactive collisions. Calculations of cross sections, differential as well as integral, yield results in excellent agreement with the best experiments. 

When isotropic scattering in all conservative inelastic collision processes is assumed, which means vanishing cross sections the second equation of... 

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