# Deuteron Coulomb Excitation in Peripheral Collisions with a Heavy Ion

## TL;DR

This paper introduces an ab initio time-dependent Basis Function method to accurately simulate Coulomb excitation of the deuteron, capturing higher-order effects beyond first-order perturbation theory.

## Contribution

The paper develops and validates a new non-perturbative tBF method for quantum dynamics, applied to deuteron Coulomb excitation, including higher-order effects.

## Key findings

- Good agreement with perturbation theory in weak fields
- Higher-order effects analyzed in strong fields
- Method effectively captures polarization reorientation

## Abstract

We develop and test an ab initio time-dependent Basis Function (tBF) method to solve non-perturbative and time-dependent problems in quantum mechanics. For our test problem, we apply this method to the Coulomb excitation of the deuteron by an impinging heavy ion. In the tBF method applied to deuterium, we employ wave functions for its bound and excited states to calculate its transition probabilities and the r.m.s. radius during the scattering process. For comparison, corresponding results based on first-order perturbation theory are also provided. For the Coulomb excitation process in a weak and time-varying Coulomb field, where higher-order effects are negligible, we obtain good agreement of the results based on these two methods. The tBF method is then applied to the Coulomb excitation process with stronger external field. The higher-order effects, such as those appearing in the reorientation of the polarization of the deuteron system, are analyzed.