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Scattering amplitude




The scattering amplitude describes the amplitude of an outgoing, elementary, spherical wave relative to a plane, incoming wave scattered on a point size particle. Since the spherical wave amplitude varies with \frac{1}{R} (note, the intensity is the |square| of the amplitude), R being the distance to the point scatterer, the unit of the scattering amplitude includes the unit of a length with respect to the units of the incoming wave. Therefore, the scattering amplitude is often also called scattering length.

Contents

Scattering cross section

The scattering amplitude, f, relates to the scattering cross section, s by s = 4πf2.

X-rays

The scattering length for X-rays is the Thompson scattering length or classical electron radius, r0.

Neutrons

The nuclear neutron scattering process involves the coherent neutron scattering length, often described by b.

Quantum mechanical formalism

A quantum mechanical approach is given by the S matrix formalism.

 
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Scattering_amplitude". A list of authors is available in Wikipedia.
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