We shall write the perturbing interaction in the form z g~ = ~V-e~~-~ It-R~I 14. which is the usual Coulomb energy of interaction of two point charges. The matrix element H theu becomes f 1~1 1 The electron's incident and final wave functions were inserted into Eq. as normalized plane waves 1 and thb step is characteristic of the Born approximatbn. Now introduce the momentum transfer vector x, o[ Figure 1, and H becomes =~ *O0~ [~ZR~lexp~.rd~d~R~ 17. When integrating over the electron's coordlnates, choose polar coordinates for which the Z axis lies along the direction s. Furthermore, it is convenient to use a simple shielded potential, V~, eV,(r-R~) = cxp 18. in place of Eq. 1~, to take care of shielding by the atomic electron cloud and to make the integration converge. In Eq. 18 a is a parameter of atomic si~c and is not critical, nor is the shape of the shielding function critical. Thus it is merely necessary to have a>>R, where R is a nuclear dimension. Also place and substitute Eq. 1$ and 19 into the part of the integral in Eq. 17 having to do with electron coordinates. Thus the integration may be carried out over the electron's coordinates for each separate proton as an origin, and let polar coordinates p', ~', @' be used where ~' is measured relative to s. Then ¢(R) becomes z exp-p [ p'~dp' gn 0'~'~' (R) = e ~ exp is" R~e xp isp' cos ~' ~~ exp (e~p-~'/~) (~')g~' ~ .~ e~ ~. ~ +~/= ~ ~ exp is" R~2 1. s~ w ww.annualreviews.org/aronline Annual Reviews