A quasiclassical approach to electron impact ionization

Abstract

A quasiclassical approximation to quantum mechanical scattering in the Moller formalism is developed. While keeping the numerical advantage of a standard classical trajectory Monte Carlo calculation, our approach is no longer restricted to using stationary initial distributions. This allows one to improve the results by using better suited initial phase space distributions than the microcanonical one and to gain insight into the collision mechanism by studying the influence of different initial distributions on the cross section. A comprehensive account of results for single, double and triple differential cross sections for atomic hydrogen will be given, in comparison with experiment and other theories.