Post-prior discrepancies in the continuum distorted wave-eikonal initial state approximation for ion-helium ionization

Abstract

We have explored post-prior discrepancies within continuum distorted wave-eikonal initial state theory for ion-atom ionization. Although there are no post-prior discrepancies when electron-target initial and final states are exact solutions of the respective Hamiltonians, discrepancies do arise for multielectronic targets, when a hydrogenic continuum with effective charge is used for the final electron-residual target wavefunction. We have found that the prior version calculations give better results than the post version, particularly for highly charged projectiles. We have explored the reasons for this behaviour and found that the prior version shows less sensitivity to the choice of the final state. The fact that the perturbation potentials operate upon the initial state suggests that the selection of the initial bound state is relatively more important than the final continuum state for the prior version.