Scattering on a Single Impurity
Klaus Morawetz
Abstract
Abstract Evolution of a many-body system consists of permanent collisions among particles. Looking at the motion of a single particle, one can identify encounters by which a particle abruptly changes the direction of flight, these are seen as true collisions, and small-angle encounters, which in sum act as an applied force rather than randomising collisions. The scattering on impurities is used to introduce the mentioned mechanisms and, in particular, to show how they affect each other. Point impurities are assumed, i.e. impurities the potential of which is restricted to a single atomic site of the crystal lattice. In this case interaction potentials never overlap and many-body effects are due to nonlocal character of the quantum particle. To introduce elementary components of the formalism, in this chapter we first describe the interaction of an electron with a single impurity. Lippman–Schwinger equations are derived and the physics behind the collision delay, dissipativeness and optical theorems is explored.