Three-potential formalism for the three-body scattering problem with attractive Coulomb interactions

Abstract

A three-body scattering process in the presence of Coulomb interaction can be decomposed formally into a two-body single channel, a two-body multichannel and a genuine three-body scattering. The corresponding integral equations are coupled Lippmann-Schwinger and Faddeev-Merkuriev integral equations. We solve them by applying the Coulomb-Sturmian separable expansion method. We present elastic scattering and reaction cross sections of the $e^++H$ system both below and above the $H(n=2)$ threshold. We found excellent agreements with previous calculations in most cases.