Evolution of atomic-molecular eigenchannels

✍ Scribed by U. Fano

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1997
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 133 KB
• Volume: 64
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0020-7608
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1097-461x(1997)64:1<31::aid-qua3>3.0.co;2-2

✦ Synopsis

Chemical reactions-as well as other collision processes-proceed generally from input elements condensing into a transitional complex and then dissociating into new fragments. Viewing the complex formation as reciprocal to its fragmentation combines them into conjugate elements of a single process, namely the complex evolution from a compact to a fragmented form, as its radius of inertia expands. As the wave functions of an atomic electron resolve conveniently into their radial and spherical-harmonic elements, so do those of multiparticle complex resolve into radial and hyperspherical-harmonic parts. Their numerical integration becomes thus accessible without resort to independent-particle or perturbative approximations. This approach displays a complex progressive branching into fragmentation channels. Evidence from small prototypes has shown each branching step to involve only a modest subset of the infinite harmonics set.