Journal of Physical Studies 1(3), 383–388 (1997) DOI: https://doi.org/10.30970/jps.01.383 NUMERICAL CALCULATION OF SADDLE-POINT DISTRIBUTIONS IN INTERMEDIATE-ENERGY PROTON–HYDROGEN COLLISIONS

M. Horbatsch
Department of Physics and Astronomy York University, 4700 Keele Str., Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3, Canada

The time-dependent Schrödinger equation for the electronic motion in the field of two nuclei moving on classical trajectories is solved numerically by discretization using a Cartesian mesh. The symmetric proton-hydrogen collision system is considered for projectile velocities $v_{\rm p}$ comparable to the electron velocity in the initially occupied H(1s) ground state. For close collisions the dominant channels are captured to the projectile ground state and elastic scattering. The ionization process in this regime is dominantly populating electron continuum states with final momenta in the saddle-point region, i.e., with small transverse momenta to the beam axis and longitudinal momentum values around $0.5 v_{\rm p}$. In this paper it is shown how to extract this information from large-scale numerical calculations.

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