Performance of Hyperspherical Harmonic Expansionon the Low-lying P and D States of Helium Atom

The wave functions of the n1,3p (n=2, 3, 4) and the n 1,3D (n=3, 4, 5 ) low-lying states of the helium atom are expanded into the complete sets of the symmetrically adapted basis functions from hyperspherical harmonic functions in the angle part and of generalized Laguerre functions in the radial part respectively, and are then augmented by the simplest type of Jastrow correlation factor to incorporate electron-nucleus cusp only. The excellent agreement between the present nonrelativistic eigen-energies and those from the sophisticated configuration interaction (CI) method for the examined states indicates that the hyperspherical harmonic method can also be applied to the P and the D excited states of the helium atom.

Dominant Correlation Effects in Two-Electron Atoms

Two-electron atoms have been investigated near threshold of double escape within the framework of hyperspherical coordinates. A particularly useful set of hyperspherical angles has been used. It is well known for many years that the hyperradial motion is nearly separable from the hyperspherical angular motion. Therefore, the Born-Oppenheimer separation method should be useful. However, the success of that method in molecular physics is based on the small mass ratio, electron mass to nuclear mass. In the atomic application such a small parameter does not exist. Nevertheless the method works surprisingly well in the lower part of the spectrum. For increasing excitation energy the method becomes shaky. Near ionization threshold, it breaks even down. The author will present elsewhere an improved Born-Oppenheimer method. First pilot developments and comparison with the experimental situation are presented already here. Inclusion of a momentum-momentum radial coupling delivers an improved basis. We show that our extended Born-Oppenheimer approach leads to a deformation of the whole potential energy surface during the collision. In consequence of this deformation we outline a quantum derivation of the Wannier threshold cross section law, and we show that (e, 2e) angular distribution data are strongly influenced by that surface deformation. Finally, we present a mechanism for electron pair formation and decay leading to a supercurrent independent of the temperature. Our framework can be extended to more than two electrons, say 3 or 4. We conclude that our improved Born-Oppenheimer method [1] is expected not only to deliver better numerical data, but it is expected to describe also the Wannier phenomenon. The idea of the new theory together with first qualitative results is presented in this paper.

The eigenenergies for ~3S excited states of the helium atom with CFPHGLF method

The matrix elements of the correlation function between symmetric potential harmonics were first simplified into the analytical summation of the grand angular momentum. The correlation-function potential-harmonic and generalized Laguerre function method (CFPHGLF) proposed by us recently was then applied to directly solve the Schrodinger equation for n3S(n=2-5) excited states of the helium atom. With only 12 PHs, the convergent eigenenergies of 23S, 33S, 43S and 53S states were 2.17427, 2.06849, 2.03644, 2.02257 Eh, respectively. The errors only were 0.00096, 0.00020, 0.00007, 0.00005 Eh, when compared with the exact Hylleraas variational results respectively.