Re: Rutherford Scattering of Two Moving Particles



John S wrote:

Would anybody happen to know what is the result of the Rutherford
scattering of two moving particles of similar weight, or where to find a
website with the answer? The traditional model of a light particle
scattering off a fixed heavy nucleus doesn't hold in the case of guiding
center scattering in a plasma. TIA.

Do it in the c/m frame... the relative motion and the motion of the c/m
decouple, and you end up with the same formula but with the reduced
masses.

There's a good section in Messiah's QM book on the details of how this
works. For the classical case see Goldstein.


--
ciao,
Bruce

drift wave turbulence: http://www.rzg.mpg.de/~bds/

.