Collisional breakup in a Coulomb few-body system with two attractive centers
Phys. Rev. A 113, 012816 – Published 15 January, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/g28l-fxmq
Abstract
One of the most persistent problems in quantum mechanics has been collisional breakup in a few-body system involving two attractive centres. In particular, with the advent of cold target recoil ion momentum spectroscopy, high-precision kinematically complete experimental measurements for such few-body problems became possible. Experimentally measured multidimensional momentum distributions of electrons ionized in intermediate-energy proton collisions with helium are calculated. Experimental and theoretical data of the wave-packet convergent close-coupling method are in excellent agreement, leading to the conclusion that theory has reached a level where it can accurately solve the proton-helium ionization problem in a kinematically complete fashion.
