A GENERALIZED NONPERTURBATIVE POLARIZED-ORBITAL METHOD FOR ELECTRON AND POSITRON SCATTERING FROM ATOMIC SYSTEMS

In the study of low-energy electron and positron scattering from atoms one of the most important interactions which must be taken into account is that due to the polarization of the target by the incoming particle. We present here a generalization of the polarized-orbital method, put forward originally by Stone and Reitz, for the determination of polarization potentials to describe this interaction for both elastic scattering as well as excitation processes when the dipole polarizability of the atomic system is relatively large.