Multiparticle Quantum Scattering with Applications to Nuclear, Atomic and Molecular Physics (The IMA Volumes in Mathematics and its Applications)

This volume is based on the outcome of a workshop held at the Institute for Mathematics and Its Applications. This institute was founded to promote the interchange of ideas between applied mathematics and the other sciences, and this volume fits into that framework by bringing together the ideas of mathematicians, physicists and chemists in the area of multiparticle scattering theory. The correct formulation of scattering theory for two-body collisions is now well worked out, but systems with three or more particles still present fundamental challenges, both in the formulations of the problem and in the interpretation of computational results. The book begins with two tutorials, one on mathematical issues, including cluster decompositions and asymptotic completeness in N-body quantum systems, and the other on computational approaches to quantum mechanics and time evolution operators, classical action, collisions in laser fields and in magnetic fields, laser-induced processes, barrier resonances, complex dilated expansions, effective potentials for nuclear collisions, long-range potentials, and the Pauli Principle.