Eur. Phys. J. D 64, 317-321 (2011)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2011-20333-7

Regular Article

Experimental determination of the scattering length for positron scattering from krypton

¹ Department of Physics, University of Trento, Povo, 38123, Trento, Italy
² ARC Centre for Antimatter-Matter Studies, School of Chemical and Physical Sciences, Flinders University, GPO Box 2100, Adelaide, 5001 SA, Australia
³ ARC Centre for Antimatter-Matter Studies, Curtin University, GPO Box U1987, Perth, 6845 WA, Australia
⁴ Institute of Mathematical Sciences, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

^a e-mail: Michael.Brunger@flinders.edu.au

Received: 7 June 2011
Received in final form: 15 August 2011
Published online: 11 October 2011

Abstract

We report the first experimentally supported determination of the scattering length for positron scattering from krypton. Our result of  −10.3 ± 1.5 a.u. compares favourably with that from a convergent close coupling calculation performed as a part of this investigation (−9.5 a.u.), and also with an earlier many body theory calculation of  −10.1 a.u. from Gribakin and Ludlow [Phys. Rev. A 70, 032720 (2004)] and a polarized-orbital result of  −10.4 a.u. from McEachran et al. [J. Phys. B 13, 1281 (1980)]. The present experimental scattering length supports the existence of a low-lying positron-krypton virtual state (Surko et al. [J. Phys. B 38, R57 (2005)]) at an energy ε = 0.13 eV.