Finite second-order Born term for Coulomb wavepacket scattering

Abstract

It has been known for some time that, for nonrelativistic Coulomb scattering, the terms in the Born series of second and higher order diverge when using the standard method of calculation. In this paper we take the matrix elements between square-integrable wavepacket state vectors. We reproduce the Rutherford cross section from the first-order contribution. We find that the second-order contribution is finite and negligible compared to the first-order contribution, away from the forward direction. At first order, the contribution to the amplitude in the forward direction is found to be finite and physically reasonable. We comment on how a similar procedure applied to the divergences of quantum field theories might render them finite.