Relativistic total cross section and angular distribution for Rayleigh scattering by atomic hydrogen

Abstract

We study the total cross section and angular distribution in Rayleigh scattering by hydrogen atom in the ground state, within the framework of Dirac relativistic equation and second-order perturbation theory. The relativistic states used for the calculations are obtained by making use of the finite basis set method and expressed in terms of B-splines and B-polynomials. We pay particular attention to the effects that arise from higher (non-dipole) terms in the expansion of the electron-photon interaction. It is shown that the angular distribution of scattered photons, while it is symmetric with respect to the scattering angle $\theta$=90${}^{\circ }$ within the electric dipole approximation, becomes asymmetric when higher multipoles are taken into account. The analytical expression of the angular distribution is parametrized in terms of Legendre polynomials. Detailed calculations are performed for photons in the energy range 0.5 to 10 keV. When possible, results are compared with previous calculations.

8 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Anomalous light shift through quantum jumps in quasi-resonant Rayleigh scattering
• Photon-photon polarization correlations as a tool for studying parity non-conservation in heliumlike Uranium

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Relativistic polarization analysis of Rayleigh scattering by atomic hydrogen
• Angular and polarization analysis for two-photon decay of 2s hyperfine states of hydrogenlike Uranium
• Spin effects probed by Rayleigh X-ray scattering off hydrogenic ions
• Analytical evaluation of atomic form factors: application to Rayleigh scattering