Pick-off annihilation of positronium in matter using full correlation single particle potentials: solid He

We investigate the modeling of positronium (Ps) states and their pick-off annihilation trapped at open volumes pockets in condensed molecular matter. Our starting point is the interacting many-body system of Ps and a He atom because it is the smallest entity that can mimic the energy gap between the highest occupied and lowest unoccupied molecular orbitals of molecules and yet the the many-body structure of the HePs system can be calculated accurately enough. The exact-diagonalization solution of the HePs system enables us to construct a pair-wise full-correlation single-particle potential for the Ps-He interaction and the total potential in solids is obtained as a superposition of the pair-wise potentials. We study in detail Ps states and their pick-off annihilation rates in voids inside solid He and analyse experimental results for Ps-induced voids in liquid He obtaining the radii of the voids. More importantly, we generalize our conclusions by testing the validity of the Tao-Eldrup model, widely used to analyse ortho-Ps annihilation measurements for voids in molecular matter, against our theoretical results for the solid He. Moreover, we discuss the influence of the partial charges of polar molecules and the strength of the van der Waals interaction on the pick-off annihilation rate.

Full correlation single-particle positron potentials for a positron and a positronium interacting with atoms

In this work we define single-particle potentials for a positron and a positronium atom interacting with light atoms (H, He, Li and Be) by inverting a single-particle Schrodinger equation. For this purpose, we use accurate energies and positron densities obtained from the many-body wavefunction of the corresponding positronic systems. The introduced potentials describe the exact correlations for the calculated systems including the formation of a positronium atom. We show that the scattering lengths and the low-energy s-wave phase shifts from accurate many-body calculations are well accounted for by the introduced potential. We also calculate self-consistent two-component density-functional theory positron potentials and densities for the bound positronic systems within the local density approximation. They are in a very good agreement with the many-body results, provided that the finite-positron-density electron-positron correlation potential is used, and they can also describe systems comprising a positronium atom. We argue that the introduced single-particle positron potentials defined for single molecules are transferable to the condensed phase when the inter-molecular interactions are weak. When this condition is fulfilled, the total positron potential can be constructed in a good approximation as the superposition of the molecular potentials.