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Since the beginning of the twentieth century, many experimental and theoretical works have been devoted to collisions between highly charged ions and atomic and molecular targets. It was realized that quantum mechanics is the only way, a priori, to describe such atomic phenomena. However, since quantum mechanics is very difficult to apply for collision systems with more than two particles, classical methods were very soon introduced and applied to simple collision systems and, subsequently, to more complicated systems. The results obtained by such classical methods were found to be surprisingly good, and classical mechanics is now well established, despite its approximations, as a replacement for or competition with quantum mechanics in many cases.
In this book, the author will focus on the development of classical methods for describing collisional and post-collisional processes. The results will be compared with those found using quantum mechanical models, in orderto demonstrate the ability of the classical approach to obtain many features and details of collision systems.
List of contents
Classical Mechanics - Goal and First Results.- Classical Mechanics' Approaches in Atomic Collisions.- Classical Treatment of Aq+ + H Collisions.- Classical Treatment of Aq+ + He Collisions.- Extension of CTMC Calculations to Multielectron Systems.- Collisions Aq+ + H2.- Collisions of Aq+ and Multielectron Molecular Targets.
About the author
François Frémont is teacher at Caen University and researcher in atomic collisions. He spent 20 years in experiment at GANIL (Caen), using accelerator at low energies to get evidence for electron correlation and to understand the role of electron capture in ion molecule collisions, and 10 years in theoretical calculations to demonstrate the ability of classical mechanics to solve many-body problems.
