Article (Published Version) http://sro.sussex.ac.uk Baskerville, Adam L, King, Andrew W and Cox, Hazel (2016) Quantum effects of nuclear motion in three-particle diatomic ions. Physical Review A, 94. 042512. ISSN 1050-2947 This version is available from Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/65251/ This document is made available in accordance with publisher policies and may differ from the published version or from the version of record. If you wish to cite this item you are advised to consult the publisher's version. Please see the URL above for details on accessing the published version.
Copyright and reuse:Sussex Research Online is a digital repository of the research output of the University.Copyright and all moral rights to the version of the paper presented here belong to the individual author(s) and/or other copyright owners. To the extent reasonable and practicable, the material made available in SRO has been checked for eligibility before being made available.Copies of full text items generally can be reproduced, displayed or performed and given to third parties in any format or medium for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge, provided that the authors, title and full bibliographic details are credited, a hyperlink and/or URL is given for the original metadata page and the content is not changed in any way.PHYSICAL REVIEW A 94, 042512 (2016) Quantum effects of nuclear motion in three-particle diatomic ions A high-accuracy, nonrelativistic wave function is used to study nuclear motion in the ground state of three-particle {a + 1 a + 2 a − 3 } electronic and muonic molecular systems without assuming the Born-Oppenheimer approximation. Intracule densities and center-of-mass particle densities show that as the mass ratio m a i /m a 3 , i = 1,2, becomes smaller, the localization of the like-charged particles (nuclei) a 1 and a 2 decreases. A coordinate system is presented to calculate center-of-mass particle densities for systems where a 1 = a 2 . It is shown that the nuclear motion is strongly correlated and depends on the relative masses of the nuclei a 1 and a 2 rather than just their absolute mass. The heavier particle is always more localized and the lighter the partner mass, the greater the localization. It is shown, for systems with m a 1