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American Journal of Physics

Scattering by two-dimensional circular barrier, hard circle, and delta function ring potentials

I. Richard Lapidus

Published May 1, 1986• 24 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Scattering lengths are obtained for the scattering of particles from two-dimensional circular barrier, hard circle, and delta function ring potentials using classical mechanics and quantum mechanics. These results will be of interest in a quantum mechanics course as a supplement to the discussion of three-dimensional scattering.
DOI
10.1119/1.14585

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Two-dimensional quantum scattering by isotropic and non-isotropic interactions localized on a circle is considered. The expansion of the interaction on the circle in a Fourier series allows us to express basic objects of scattering theory (resolvent, T operator, differential cross length, cross length, and cross length averaged over all orientations of the incident particle), in terms of operations on matrices. For numerical applications, these matrices are truncated to a given order. If the interaction is isotropic, this general formulation reduces to the usual one, and the resonances in the isotropic cases are studied because they allow us to interpret resonances in some non-isotropic cases. Applications to open circular billiards are given. A first approach to the open quantum circular billiard is an interaction equal to zero on some parts of the circle and to a great value λ on the other parts. Then, it turns out that the limit λ → +∞ does not lead to an explicit result in this approach. A second approach to the open circular billiard is given by replacing apertures (where the interaction is zero) by pseudo-apertures (where the interaction is small but non-zero), and the limit λ → +∞ then leads to an explicit result. In the high energy regime, the two approaches give similar results and allow interpretation of numerous results, in particular, for differential cross lengths, in terms of classical mechanics.
The quantum description of a free particle subject to a delta circular ring and a delta spherical shell is studied. We determine the bound eigenstates and energy spectra for different angular momentum states. The normalization constants of the bound states and the transmission and reflection coefficients of the scattering states are calculated in closed form. The ground state of the delta ring is always present regardless of the potential strength. In contrast, the delta shell requires a threshold of the delta strength for the first eigenstate to appear. For the ring and the shell, the wave functions tend to be degenerate at high energies, and the effect of angular momentum on the wave functions becomes negligible. This work generalizes the standard problem of the one-dimensional delta potential studied in textbooks.
Introduction.We give three applications of probability to scattering theory.The first question we consider is that of the "scattering length."We obtain a probabilistic expression for scattering length and use this expression to prove that in the case of an impenetrable obstacle ("hard" potential) the scattering length T is the same as the electrostatic capacity.Next, we briefly touch upon a problem which is inherently probabilistic-namely, scattering in a medium with random boundary.We find that if a large number of small hard spheres ("dust particles") are distributed at random in the medium, the effect is to shift all the eigenvalues by a constant.Our final topic is the so-called "inverse problem" of scattering theory: given the scattering operator, to compute the potential.For certain spherically symmetric potentials, this problem was solved in a famous paper of GelTand and Levitan.Here we show that their result can be included in the circle of potential-theoretic problems which can be solved by means of Brownian motion and Wiener integrals.We quickly sketch some of the physical background.We are concerned with the Schrodinger equation of non-relativistic quantum mechanics.In its stationary or time-independent form, this equation isThe "wave function" I/J depends on both the position vector fiEfi 3 and the wave number k.The real parameter k 2 is proportional to the energy.The function q(R) is called the "potential."It represents the interaction of the quantum-mechanical "particle" with some force field.The "scattering problem" is, roughly speaking, to determine the effect of this interaction asymptotically for large R.More precisely, we seek a solution of (1) which at |fl| = » is of the asymptotic form e iV2kz + fk(e)e iV ^k> ^l\\R\\ where e is the unit vector in the direction of R. The first term, e iV2kz , is an incident wave in the direction of the zaxis; the second term /fc(e)e iV ^I^H/||R||, is the "scattered wave."