Zooming in on the collision

When we zoom in on the collision and consider short delays after the collision we see how the projection of the halo of scattered particles evolves from a circle to an ellipse to a line. This is because the particles collide in an anisotropic harmonic potential

If two particles collide elastically, conservation of momentum and energy dictate that they (in the center-of-mass frame) subsequently will be located (somewhere) on a sphere centered on the collision point. If they collide in a harmonic potential which is anisotropic this sphere is modified to an ellipsoid as illustrated below

$\includegraphics[width=0.75\columnwidth, clip]{C:/webpage/figs/binary.eps}$

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nk 2004-11-02