Wave-function visualization of core-induced interaction of a non-hydrogenic Rydberg atom in an electric field

Abstract

We have investigated the wave-function feature of Rydberg sodium in a uniform electric field and found that the coreinduced interaction of non-hydrogenic atom in electric field can be directly visualized in the wave-function. As is well known, the hydrogen atom in electric field can be separated in parabolic coordinates (η, ξ), whose eigen-function can show a clear pattern towards negative and positive directions corresponding to the so-called red and blue states without ambiguity, respectively. It can be served as a complete orthogonal basis set to study the core-induced interaction of non-hydrogenic atom in electric field. Owing to complete different patterns of the probability distribution for red and blue states, the interaction can be visualized in the wave-function directly via superposition. Moreover, the constructive and destructive interferences between red and blue states are also observed in the wave-function, explicitly explaining the experimental measurement for the spectral oscillator strength.

Analytical S-matrix derivation in the theory of the nonhydrogenic Stark effect

“…Recent experimental and theoretical studies aiming at extension of the theory to the nonhydrogenic atoms have been reviewed in a number of papers [19,21,[27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34]. Many authors use the fact that the external electric field F is very weak at the atomic scale.…”