Recursive determination of phase shifts for screened Coulomb potentials

TL;DR

This paper introduces a recurrence relation method for calculating phase shifts in screened Coulomb potentials, which are crucial for atomic structure calculations in hot plasmas.

Contribution

It presents a novel recurrence relation for phase shifts specific to parametric potentials used in atomic-structure modeling.

Findings

Provides an efficient computational approach for phase shifts

Applicable to Yukawa-type screened Coulomb potentials

Enhances accuracy in plasma atomic structure calculations

Abstract

In the calculation of hot-plasma atomic structure, the continuum wavefunctions are characterized by phase shifts, which therefore determine the scattering cross-sections. In this short paper, we propose a recurrence relation for the phase shifts in the case of a particular type of parametric potentials widely used in atomic-structure codes. These potentials have to be linear combinations of static screened Coulomb potentials (Yukawa-type potentials) multiplied by polynomial functions.