H^- and He in a uniform magnetic field: Ground-state wave functions, energies, and binding energies for fields below 10⁹ G

Authors

Chang-Hwan Park, University of Nebraska - Lincoln
Anthony F. Starace, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

February 1984

Comments

Published by American Physical Society. Phys. Rev. A 29, 442 (1984). http://pra.aps.org. Copyright © 1984 American Physical Society. Permission to use.

Abstract

Wave functions, energies, and binding energies for the lowest singlet states of H- and He in uniform magnetic fields B<10⁹ G are calculated using an adiabatic approximation in hyperspherical coordinates. In computing the angular part of the wave functions, a coupled expansion in one-electron oblate spheroidal angle functions is used. In addition to contracting the two-electron wave function radially, the magnetic field is found to distort the angular part of the wave function mainly by reducing the ss¹S character of the state and replacing it with an sd ¹D character. Results for energies and binding energies are comparable with those obtained in variational calculations. In order to compute the binding energies of H^- and He we have also calculated the binding energies of the ground states of H and He⁺ in uniform magnetic fields B<10⁹ G using the adiabatic oblate-spheroidal-coordinate method of Starace and Webster.