Critical study of photodetachment of H- at energies up to the n=4 threshold.

Abstract

We apply the close-coupling method in terms of the hyperspherical coordinates to the two-electron system H[sup [minus]]. A two-dimensional matching procedure is used to connect the close-coupling wave function to an independent-electron wave function in the asymptotic region. The latter is described as the wave function of a detached electron moving in a dipole potential field of the neutral hydrogen atom. The total phbotodetachment cross sections and the partial cross sections for the production of the H atoms in different states [ital n] are calculated up to the [ital n]=4 hydrogenic threshold. The results obtained in the length and acceleration forms agree within about three significant figures. The magnitude and shape of the [sup 1][ital P[ital o]] shape resonance just above the [ital n]=2 threshold are found to depend sensitively on the initial-state wave function. This appears to be one of the reasons for a disparity among the cross sections in the literature. The present result improves greatly on the existing computational results. The relative magnitudes of the partial cross sections for the production of H ([ital n]=1,2,3) atoms below the [ital n]=4 threshold are substantially different from the only previous results of the eigenchannel [ital R]-matrix calculations [H. R.more » Sadeghpour, C. H. Greene, and M. Cavagnero, Phys. Rev. A 45, 1587 (1992)]. The present results on both partial and total cross sections are in excellent agreement with experiments.« less