PARABOLIC-HYPERSPHERICAL APPROACH TO THE FRAGMENTATION OF 3-PARTICLE COULOMB-SYSTEMS

In this work the three-body Coulomb continuum problem is reformulated in a set of parabolic-hyperspherical coordinates. It is shown how this procedure yields additional information on the angular and radial beh avior of correlated three-body Coulomb continuum wave functions. For t wo electrons receding from a nucleus it is shown that three-body coupl ing is essential in describing the dependence of the fragmentation dyn amics on the ratio of the. electronic distances from the nucleus where as the angular distribution of these electrons is less sensitive to th is coupling. The spin asymmetry in the total cross section for electro n-impact ionization of atomic hydrogen is analyzed and found to be sen sitive to the radial correlation of the outgoing electrons.