Distorted Wave Method for Electron Capture from Atomic Hydrogen

The distorted wave method, in which distorted waves replace plane waves in the matrix elements for the collision amplitude, is given a rigorous formulation for arbitrary rearrangement collisions. In atomic collisions involving electron rearrangement, the formulation enables removal of the unphysical internuclear Coulomb interaction from the "perturbation" Hamiltonian. The procedure is applied to the problem of electron capture by protons in atomic hydrogen, eliminating explicit dependence on the proton-proton interaction. Numerical results of a first order calculation are in good agreement with experiments from 35 to 200 kev. Despite this agreement and the agreement of previous calculations it is felt the charge transfer process is still not well understood.