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Long-range interactions and dynamics of excited atoms

Sigrid Ina Simonsen

Published Jun 10, 2010• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

A study of the dynamics of excited hydrogenic atoms, with emphasis on analytical and numerical calculations of the time-independent and the time-dependent Schrõdinger equation. A short description of Rydberg atoms and their applications is also present in the thesis.

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We establish a first-principle model for the simulation of spatiotemporal light pulse dynamics based on the combination of the time-dependent Schrödinger equation and the unidirectional propagation equation. The proposed numerical scheme enables computationally efficient simulation while being stable and accurate. We use the new model to examine self-focusing of a short pulse in atomic hydrogen and show that an accurate description of the excited-levels dynamics can only be achieved by a propagation model with an ab-initio description of the light-matter interaction, which accounts for the laser-dressed multilevel structure of the system, including bound and free states, and its sub-cycle response.
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