Russell's Blog

Today's was scattering galore. When I got to class, Abers was in the middle of a long calculation, and I never found out what it was he was calculating. There were Green's functions involved, so it must have had something to do with the Born approximation. Poisson and Fresnel were mentioned as well, and the appearance of the latter name sheds some light (har har) on the nature impermeable mathematics.

Next, Abers calculated the classical cross section for a sphere (it's just the cross sectional area of the sphere) and the cross section to propagating plane wave (four times as big). In the region of small-angle deflections, the wave equation undergoes constructive interference. Both calculations is pretty fundamental, so I'll revisit it once I finish the homework for the variational principle.

Update: Here is once case where I am deeply grateful for Abers' book. His lectures match the book exactly, so if I miss something in class, I know I can always find it later. My hunch was correct; he working through the Born series for spherically symmetric potentials.