Energy and Angular-Momentum Redistribution in Hydrogen Migdal Ionization
Abstract
MARVEL's first direct observation of Migdal ionization in neutron scattering marks an experimental milestone and opens a new avenue for probing electronic response to nuclear recoil. Hydrogen, both the simplest atom and a constituent of its molecular target, provides a controlled benchmark. Within the nonrelativistic sudden approximation, we compute its energy-differential and integrated ionization probabilities with the full recoil phase. At the recoil parameter β≡ vN/(αc)=1.04, the full-to-dipole spectral ratio rises from $0.43$ when the emitted-electron energy is 1% of the hydrogen binding energy to $5.0$ when it is $2.3$ times that energy. Near β=10, partial waves with orbital angular momentum ℓ≥3 carry more than 90% of the calculated continuum probability. An independent bound-state-closure evaluation verifies the absolute normalization: at eight recoil values, its ionization probabilities agree with the continuum-integrated results to relative discrepancies below 4.4×10−7. These results extend the hydrogen dipole response to the fast-neutron regime and establish energy and angular-momentum redistribution as linked consequences of resolving the recoil phase across an atom.
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BibTeX
@misc{li2026energy,
title = {{Energy and Angular-Momentum Redistribution in Hydrogen Migdal Ionization}},
author = {Haoyang Li and Zeyu Li and Ning Liu and Chuan-Yang Xing and Bin Zhu},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.23330},
eprint = {2609.23330},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.23330},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Energy and Angular-Momentum Redistribution in Hydrogen Migdal Ionization
AU - Haoyang Li
AU - Zeyu Li
AU - Ning Liu
AU - Chuan-Yang Xing
AU - Bin Zhu
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/20
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.23330
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.23330
AB - MARVEL's first direct observation of Migdal ionization in neutron scattering marks an experimental milestone and opens a new avenue for probing electronic response to nuclear recoil. Hydrogen, both the simplest atom and a constituent of its molecular target, provides a controlled benchmark. Within the nonrelativistic sudden approximation, we compute its energy-differential and integrated ionization probabilities with the full recoil phase. At the recoil parameter β≡ v_N/(αc)=1.04, the full-to-dipole spectral ratio rises from $0.43$ when the emitted-electron energy is 1% of the hydrogen binding energy to $5.0$ when it is $2.3$ times that energy. Near β=10, partial waves with orbital angular momentum ℓ≥3 carry more than 90% of the calculated continuum probability. An independent bound-state-closure evaluation verifies the absolute normalization: at eight recoil values, its ionization probabilities agree with the continuum-integrated results to relative discrepancies below 4.4×10^−7. These results extend the hydrogen dipole response to the fast-neutron regime and establish energy and angular-momentum redistribution as linked consequences of resolving the recoil phase across an atom.
ER -