State dependence of rayleigh scattering from an=2 state of hydrogenlike atoms

Abstract

We consider Rayleigh scattering from a hydrogenlike atom in an arbitrary excitedn=2 state, and we investigate theoretically the dependence of the scattered radiation intensity and Stokes parameters on the state multipoles for the case of unpolarized incident radiation. Because in then=2 case Rayleigh scattering can not be accompanied by the change of the electron angular momentum, only 10 out of the 16 state multipoles influence the scattered radiation attributes. Our study reveals the existence of a measurable quantity which is determined only by Rayleigh scattering from 2p states. For the particular case of excitation by electron impact, some quantitative predictions are made, at the photon scattering angle ϑ=π/2, based on values for the state multipoles extracted from the literature (Blum and Kleinpoppen, Band). The vicinity of Balmer α and Lyman α resonances are studied in detail.