Abstract
We demonstrate for the first time that the phase shift in elastic positronium-atom scattering can be precisely determined by the confined variational method, in spite of the fact that the Hamiltonian includes an unphysical confining potential acting on the center of mass of the positron and one of the atomic electrons. As an example, we study the S-wave elastic scattering for the positronium-hydrogen scattering system, where the existing ∼4% discrepancy between the Kohn variational calculation and the R-matrix calculation is resolved.