Remarks on momentum-space hydrogenic wavefunctions

Abstract

Two simple expressions are constructed for the momentum representation of the non-relativistic and relativistic hydrogen wavefunctions in terms of Gaussian hypergeometric functions which are either polynomials or absolutely convergent. The usefulness of these results is demonstrated by calculating momentum distributions of the K- and L-shell electrons of 79Au. It is found that unlike K, L1 and L2 subshells, the relativistic effects reduce the momentum distribution of L3 electrons compared with the non-relativistic result.