General time-independent theory of ionization and breakup reactions

A rigorous formulation of non-relativistic time-dependent multiparticle collision theory was developed some time ago, in which the effect of long-range Coulomb forces was accounted for by a modification of the standard wave operator that appears in treatments of neutral-particle scattering. This theory is here converted to a time-independent form, with the wave-operator modification replaced by the use of Coulomb-modified plane waves in the construction of the wave packets that appear in the theory. This provides a convenient basis for the development of approximation techniques in configuration space, including the use of variational methods of calculation, based on integral identities for the transition amplitudes. In many cases oscillatory divergences appear in the integrals representing the ionization or breakup amplitudes. A method for removing such divergences by an averaging of the integrand at great distances is defined.