A Neutral Atom and a Charged Wire: From Elastic scattering to Absorption

Abstract

We solve the problem of a neutral atom interacting with a charged wire, giving rise to an attractive 1/r^2 potential in two dimensions. We show how a suitable average over all possible self-adjoint extensions of the radial Schroedinger Hamiltonian eventually leads to the classical formula for absorption of the atom, a formula shown to be in agreement with a recent experiment.

Comments: 7 pages, to appear in Physical Review A