Induced electron capture in field-assisted energetic atomic collisions

We present model considerations for the process of the electron capture in energetic nonrelativstic collisions of light atomic particles in the presence of a relatively weak low-frequency external electromagnetic field. The field is treated as an elliptically polarized quantum single-mode field. Establishing validity of the dipole approximation to the electron transfer (where the total momentum of all emitted or absorbed photons can be well above the typical inneratomic momenta of an electron in the initial and final states) and neglecting the Doppler and aberration effects, we give a fully nonrelativistic treatment for the field-assisted collisions and show that the capture cross section is invariant with respect to the Galilean transformations. The model consideration suggests that the field can substantially influence the capture dynamics and considerably change the capture cross section compared to the field-free collisions. This is especially the case if the “resonance” conditions nω≈±v ²/2 are satisfied, with nω being the energy transferred to or absorbed from the electromagnetic field and v the collision velocity.