Proton-hydrogen collision at cold temperatures

Abstract

We study the proton-hydrogen collision in the energy range from 0 to 5 K where the hyperfine structure of the hydrogen atom is important. The proper multichannel treatment of the hyperfine structure is found to be crucial at cold temperatures compared to the elastic approximation used for higher temperatures. Both elastic and hyperfine-changing inelastic processes are investigated using the newly developed multichannel quantum-defect theory (MQDT) as well as the traditional coupled-channel numerical method. Cross section results from the two methods coincide well throughout the energy range. The MQDT with a few parameters provide an efficient and basically analytic description of the proton-hydrogen interaction in this energy regime.