Session S6 - Large-Scale Computational Approaches to Few-Body Physics Problems.
INVITED session, Wednesday afternoon, March 24
516AB, Palais des Congres
Among the last problems in atomic and molecular physics to be “reduced to computation” – even in principle – have been processes that lead to the separation of three charged particles. Double photoionization and ionization by electron impact are examples of breakup processes in which two electrons leave behind an atomic or molecular ion creating a signature of electron correlation in the cross sections. The key barrier to solving these problems has been that the formally correct asymptotic boundary conditions for solving the Schrödinger equation for the breakup of Coulomb systems have proved to be completely impractical for numerical calculations. A reformulation involving “exterior complex scaling” of the electronic coordinates and the application of modern parallel computing techniques have finally provided procedures for solving such problems from first principles. The basic ideas of these new methods will be discussed and examples of their application to essentially exact calculations for several systems involving two electrons will be demonstrated.