Coulomb scattering

Coulomb scattering is the elastic scattering of charged particles by the Coulomb interaction. The physical phenomenon was used by Ernest Rutherford in a classic 1911 paper that eventually led to the widespread use of scattering in particle physics to study subatomic matter. The details of Coulomb scattering vary with the mass and properties of the target particles, leading to special subtypes and a variety of applications. Rutherford scattering refers to two nuclear particles and is exploited by the materials science community in an analytical technique called Rutherford backscattering. Electron on nuclei are employed in electron polarimeters and, for coherent electron sources, in many different kinds of electron diffraction.

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