Local Momenta and Weak Quantum Measurements in Massive Three-Body Coulomb Systems

In recent years researchers have attempted to improve the continuum state three-body wavefunction for three, mutually interacting Coulomb particles by including, so called, local momentum effects. Numerical calculations confirm that while ignoring these local momentum effects for \emph{light-ion--atom} processes, may be appropriate, three-body effects may dominate in the reaction zone for \emph{heavy-ion--atom} processes involving massive, Coulomb interacting particles. It is also shown that a real-valued, position-dependent phase is added to a locally distorted two-body coulomb wave, which may be detectable in continued studies of massive coulomb systems at near threshold energies.