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In mathematics and physics, scattering theory is a framework for studying and understanding the scattering of waves and particles. Prosaically, wave scattering corresponds to the collision and scattering of a wave with some material object, for instance sunlight scattered by rain drops to form a rainbow. Examples of particle scattering includes the motion of billiard balls or the Rutherford scattering of alpha particles by gold nucleii. More precisely, scattering consists of the study of how solutions of partial differential equations, propagating freely "in the distant past", come together and interact with one another or with a boundary condition, and then propagate way "to the distant future".
The direct scattering problem is the problem determining the distribution of scattered radiation/particle flux basing on the characteristics of the scatterer.
The inverse scattering problem is the problem of determining the characteristics of an object (its shape, internal constitution, etc.) from measurement data of radiation or particles scattered from the object.
Since its early statement for radiolocation, the problem has found vast number of applications, such as echolocation, geophysical survey, nondestructive testing, medical imaging and quantum field theory, to name just a few.
In theoretical physics
In mathematical physics, scattering theory is a framework for studying and understanding the interaction or scattering of solutions to partial differential equations. In acoustics, the differential equation is the wave equation, and scattering studies how its solutions, the sound waves, scatter from solid objects or propagate through non-uniform media (such as sound waves, in sea water, coming from a submarine). In the case of classical electrodynamics, the differential equation is again the wave equation, and the scattering of light or radio waves is studied. In quantum mechanics and particle physics, the equations are those of QED, QCD and the Standard Model, the solutions of which correspond to fundamental particles. In quantum chemistry, the solutions correspond to atoms and molecules, governed by the Schroedinger equation.
Elastic and inelastic scattering
The example of scattering in quantum chemistry is particularly instructive, as the theory is reasonably complex while still having a good foundation on which to build an intuitive understanding. When two atoms are scattered off one another, one can understand them as being the bound state solutions of some differential equation. Thus, for example, the hydrogen atom corresponds to a solution to the Schroedinger equation with an inverse-square law central potential. The scattering of two hydrogen atoms will disturb the state of each atom, resulting in one or both becoming excited, or even ionized. Thus, collisions can be either elastic (the internal quantum states of the particles are not changed) or inelastic (the internal quantum states of the particles are changed). From the experimental viewpoint the observable quantity is the cross section. From the theoretical viewpoint the key quantity is the S matrix.
Topics in physics
According to the optics classification of the Optical Society of America this field consists of the following topics:
The mathematical framework
In mathematics, scattering theory deals with a more abstract formulation of the same set of concepts. For example, if a differential equation is known to have some simple, localized solutions, and the solutions are a function of a single parameter, that parameter can take the conceptual role of time. One then asks what might happen if two such solutions are set up far away from each other, in the "distant past", and are made to move towards each other, interact (under the constraint of the differential equation) and then move apart in the "future". The scattering matrix then pairs solutions in the "distant past" to those in the "distant future".
Solutions to differential equations are often posed on manifolds. Frequently, the means to the solution requires the study of the spectrum of an operator on the manifold. As a result, the solutions often have a spectrum that can be identified with a Hilbert space, and scattering is described by a certain map, the S matrix, on Hilbert spaces. Spaces with a discrete spectrum correspond to bound states in quantum mechanics, while a continuous spectrum is associated with scattering states. The study of inelastic scattering then asks how discrete and continuous spectra are mixed together.
An important, notable development is the inverse scattering transform, central to the solution of many exactly solvable models.
References
Scattering theory | Scattering, absorption and radiative transfer (optics) | Quantum mechanics | Hilbert space
"Scattering theory"