Collisional approach to dynamics of resonance atomic states in an external field

Abstract

The following aspects of the dynamics of an atomic state in an external stationary field are assessed: (i) the rearrangement problem; (ii) the description of the appropriate final-channel wavefunctions; (iii) the analytical properties of the transition amplitude into the continuum. The rearrangement problem was solved by the introduction of the effective Hamiltonian, the eigenstates of which include both the initial state and final states ('modified states of continuum spectrum' MSCS) which describe the potential part of the exact wavefunction of the scattering problem. It is shown that the amplitude of decay and transition into MSCS as functions of time have an exact representation as a sum of resonance terms defined by a set of resonance states and the matrix elements of the shift R-matrix operator. Analysing the following expansion basis sets: stationary states, Volkov-Keldysh states and coherent states it is shown that the most appropriate one is a modified set of Volkov-Keldysh states.