Coulomb effects in polarization transfer in elastic antiproton and proton electron scattering at low energies

TL;DR

This paper investigates how Coulomb interactions affect polarization transfer in low-energy elastic scattering of protons and antiprotons with electrons, revealing significant differences in spin transfer cross sections due to Coulomb effects.

Contribution

It provides a detailed calculation of Coulomb distortion effects on polarization transfer using a distorted wave Born approximation at low energies.

Findings

Coulomb effects significantly reduce spin transfer in antiproton-electron scattering.

Coulomb effects dramatically increase spin transfer in proton-electron scattering below 20 keV.

The study highlights the importance of Coulomb distortion in low-energy scattering experiments.

Abstract

The influence of Coulomb distortion on the polarization transfer in elastic proton and antiproton electron scattering at low energies is calculated in a distorted wave Born approximation. For antiproton electron scattering Coulomb effects reduce substantially the spin transfer cross section compared to the plane wave Born approximation whereas for proton electron scattering they lead to a dramatic increase for kinetic proton lab energies below about 20 keV.