Kinetically balanced Gaussian basis-set approach to relativistic Compton profiles of atoms

Abstract

Atomic Compton profiles (CPs) are a very important property which provide us information about the momentum distribution of atomic electrons. Therefore, for CPs of heavy atoms, relativistic effects are expected to be important, warranting a relativistic treatment of the problem. In this paper, we present an efficient approach aimed at ab initio calculations of atomic CPs within a Dirac-Hartree-Fock (DHF) formalism, employing kinetically balanced Gaussian basis functions. The approach is used to compute the CPs of noble gases ranging from He to Rn, and the results have been compared to the experimental and other theoretical data, wherever possible. The influence of the quality of the basis set on the calculated CPs has also been systematically investigated.