Semiclassical Dynamics and Relaxation
Part of the Springer Series on Atomic, Optical, and Plasma Physics book series (SSAOPP, volume 47)
Part of the Springer Series on Atomic, Optical, and Plasma Physics book series (SSAOPP, volume 47)
This text concerns ‘semiclassical’ within various meanings. These include the familiar JWKB approximation and its phase-integral generalizations in Chapter 2 to two and four transition points with or without one or two poles: by corollary, crossing and non-crossing nonadiabatic collision theory. Above and below threshold Wannier ionization is covered in Chapter 3 where the large parameters are the inverses of the variation of the hyperspherical angles from their ridge values. The more familiar impact parameter treatment, in which the possibly relativistic heavy-particle relative motion is treated classically and the electrons quantally, is well covered in Chapter 4. Diffusion in solids and liquids is described in Chapter 5 where typically the large parameter is the height of the barrier which is overcome by thermal agitation. Hypergeometric functions are introduced in Chapter 1 and Mittag-Leffler functions in Appendix B.