Abstract
When ortho-positronium collides with a hydrogen atom not only may it be scattered, but there is also the possibility of conversion of the ortho-positronium to para-positronium by electron exchange. The total elastic cross section and the conversion cross section have been calculated for positronium kinetic energies 0 to 9.8 ev, for the l=0 partial wave only. A particular choice of trial wave function explicitly satisfying the Pauli principle and a variational argument lead to integro-differential equations, with no `ordinary force', from which the phase shifts have been obtained by a numerical method. The cross sections are very strongly energy dependent: the total cross section ranges from 192?a02 at zero energy to 2.92?a02 at 6.8 ev, while the (conversion)/(total) ratio ranges from 0.176 to 0.070 over these energies. These ratios are well below the value ? expected at high energies from the Born approximation. The total cross section results of Massey and Mohr for this problem using Born approximation were 230?a02 at zero energy and 25?a02 at 6.8 ev, with the (conversion)/(total) ratio ?.
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