Journal of Physics C Solid State Physics
Rainbow scattering from anisotropic potentials
F Drepper
Abstract
The leading term in a semiclassical expansion of the quantum mechanical cross section for potential scattering is obtained for those cases where the classical cross section shows either a fold or an umbilic (hyperbolic or elliptic) type catastrophe. As an intermediate step a narrow wave packet approximation is derived by decomposing the S-matrix into transition amplitudes for wave packets and by expanding the modulus of these amplitudes for large mass.