Features of the bremsstrahlung accompanying collisions with a hydrogen atom in an excited state

Abstract

The features of the bremsstrahlung appearing during a collision of a fast charged particle with a hydrogen atom (or hydrogenic ion) in an excited state are investigated. It is shown that the emission spectrum of photons with energies greater than the ionization potential of a given excited state (except the 2s state) displays narrow lines, which are caused by de-excitation of the atom in an intermediate state. It is demonstrated that the scattering of a charged particle on an excited hydrogen atom produces a feature which is not observed in the case of scattering on a ground-state hydrogen atom. Expressions are obtained for the generalized dynamic polarizability of the hydrogen atom and hydrogenic ions in the 1s, 2s, and 3s states. A method is developed for deriving expressions for the generalized dynamic polarizabilities of other excited states through the use of the Coulomb Green’s function and representation of the electronic wave function in terms of the differentiation of the generating functions of Laguerre polynomials. The bremsstrahlung cross sections for electrons and positrons colliding with hydrogen atoms in the 1s, 2s, and 3s states are calculated.