Proton/antiproton collisions with positronium in the presence of an electric field

Abstract

Effects of aligned electric field on the hydrogen formation mechanism have been studied. Classical trajectory Monte Carlo (CTMC) method is used to simulate the proton/antiproton collisions with positronium (Ps) in the energy range of 1-200 keV. Total cross section for an electron/positron capture by colliding proton/antiproton has been calculated using the simple Coulomb potential. The hydrogen and antihydrogen formation in these capture processes, as expected, is reported to be charge conjugate. The capture cross sections are in reasonable agreement with the recently reported experimental and theoretical results. The effects of the external electric field are seen to be quite prominent. © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.