Kicking electrons

TL;DR

This paper introduces the concept of dominant interaction Hamiltonians for classical electron-atom scattering, showing how switching between Hamiltonians models energy exchange and aligns well with quantum results.

Contribution

It presents a novel approach using dominant interaction Hamiltonians to model electron scattering, providing insights into energy exchange mechanisms and improved quantum-classical correspondence.

Findings

Switching Hamiltonians models energy exchange effectively.

Approximate classical results align better with quantum data.

The method offers a new perspective on electron scattering dynamics.

Abstract

The concept of dominant interaction hamiltonians is introduced and applied to classical planar electron-atom scattering. Each trajectory is governed in different time intervals by two variants of a separable approximate hamiltonian. Switching between them results in exchange of energy between the two electrons. A second mechanism condenses the electron-electron interaction to instants in time and leads to an exchange of energy and angular momentum among the two electrons in form of kicks. We calculate the approximate and full classical deflection functions and show that the latter can be interpreted in terms of the switching sequences of the approximate one. Finally, we demonstrate that the quantum results agree better with the approximate classical dynamical results than with the full ones.