Physica Scripta
Terms of a Hydrogen Molecule in a High Magnetic Field
M. A. Liberman, A V Petrov
Abstract
Analytical expressions for the pair interaction potential between hydrogen atoms in a high magnetic field are derived for the triplet and singlet terms. The results are asymptotically exact for large interatomic distance R compared with the atomic size and in the limit of ultrahigh magnetic fields. It is shown that the ground state of the hydrogen molecule in a high magnetic field is the triplet term 3 Π u , which corresponds to the case when one atom is in the ground state and the other is in the first excited state. The interaction between two ground-state hydrogen atoms in the term 3 Σ u is very weak. The energy of the singlet term 1 Σ g has a deep minimum, which is much higher than the triplet one and may be a metastable state of a hydrogen molecule only.