Recent Progress in Electron-Atom Collision Theory

A survey of the main trends in electron-atom collision theory as elaborated by the principal contributions to the 5th International Conference on the Physics of Electronic and Atomic Collisions (Leningrad, July 1967) is presented. In effect this review covers the progress since the 1965 Belgrade Conference on Phenomena in Ionized Gases. Electron-molecule collisions, for which no major advance in theory can be reported, are treated briefly. Electron-atom collision theory, including positron reactions, is treated more fully. Especially noted is the current interest in the study of the energies and widths of resonances inelectron-atom elastic scattering. The utility of angular distribution measurements is illustrated, and the theoretical work toward developing methods for predicting the resonances is described. Recent developments in the projection operator method and the close-coupling and non-adiabatic methods are discussed and evaluated. (author)