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European Journal of Physics

The magnetic field of the one-electron atom

C Aerts, B. Zarychta, P. Strange

Published Jul 1, 2003• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Basic electromagnetism and relativistic quantum theory are used to evaluate the magnetic field due to the electron in a one-electron atom. The field patterns are displayed and discussed for several eigenstates with low values of the quantum numbers. The effect of increasing the number of protons in the nucleus is shown explicitly. Comparison with the non-relativistic result illustrates the effects of relativity in atoms. There is a brief discussion of the meaning of the terms spin and orbital magnetic moment of an atom in the light of these results.

DOI
10.1088/0143-0807/24/4/364

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Basic electromagnetism and relativistic quantum theory are used to evaluate the magnetic field due to the electron in a one-electron atom. The field patterns are displayed and discussed for several eigenstates with low values of the quantum numbers. The effect of increasing the number of protons in the nucleus is shown explicitly. Comparison with the non-relativistic result illustrates the effects of relativity in atoms. There is a brief discussion of the meaning of the terms spin and orbital magnetic moment of an atom in the light of these results.
This chapter discusses the prime cause of the magnetic moment within an individual atom. In the classical model, the angular momentum of the electrons can be used to determine the magnetic moments of the electrons by invoking the concept of electrical charge in motion. There are two contributions to the electronic magnetic moment: an orbital magnetic moment due to orbital angular momentum and a spin magnetic moment due to electron spin. The component of orbital angular momentum along the axis of a magnetic field is restricted to discrete values by quantum mechanics. Electrons have spin angular momentum, which can be represented by the spin quantum number. As the magnetic field is increased and the field splitting becomes greater than the multiple splitting, the anomalous Zeeman effect changes over to a normal Zeeman effect. The chapter looks at experimental evidence confirming the quantization of magnetic moments, specifically the Zeeman effect and the Stern-Gerlach experiment.
Spin is well known to be an intrinsically relativistic property of particles. Nonetheless its effects are seen in many physical situations which are not obviously relativistic, perhaps the most obvious examples being magnets and the quantum mechanically permitted electronic configurations of the elements in the periodic table. The view of spin adopted in these and other problems is that the electron has a quantized spin ( s = 1/2) and that is a fundamental tenet of the theory, rather than something that has to be explained. In this chapter we are going to discuss the behaviour of spin-1/2 particles (electrons, protons and neutrons for example) without much direct reference to relativistic quantum theory and the origins of spin. This chapter should be instructive in its own right and as a guide to understanding spin when we come to discuss it in a fully relativistic context at various stages throughout this book. Unless otherwise specified, we will refer to electrons, but it should be borne in mind that the theory is equally applicable to any spin-1/2 particle. Students of quantum theory cannot delve very deeply into the subject without coming across the quantization of angular momentum. The orbital angular momentum usually surfaces in the theory leading up to the quantum description of the hydrogen atom.
The mechanical angular momentum and magnetic moment of the electron and proton spin have been calculated semiclassically with the aid of the uncertainty principle for energy and time.The spin effects of both kinds of the elementary particles can be expressed in terms of similar formulae.The quantization of the spin motion has been done on the basis of the old quantum theory.It gives a quantum number n = 1/2 as the index of the spin state acceptable for both the electron and proton particle.In effect of the spin existence the electron motion in the hydrogen atom can be represented as a drift motion accomplished in a combined electric and magnetic field.More than 18,000 spin oscillations accompany one drift circulation performed along the lowest orbit of the Bohr atom.The semiclassical theory developed in the paper has been applied to calculate the doublet separation of the experimentally well-examined D line entering the spectrum of the sodium atom.This separation is found to be much similar to that obtained according to the relativistic old quantum theory.
In this chapter we are going to make a very detailed study of the one-electron atom using relativistic quantum mechanics. The one-electron atom is the simplest bound system that occurs in nature, and plays a central role in both classical and quantum theory. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, it is a model that can be solved exactly at many levels of theory — the classical Bohr atom, the non-relativistic quantum mechanical one-electron atom, and the relativistic one-electron atom with spin zero and spin 1/2. Secondly, most of our understanding of multielectron atoms, molecules and solids is based on this model. Of course, a good description of the hydrogen atom is provided by non-relativistic Schrödinger theory. However, once the relativistic quantum theory had been discovered it was of great importance to validate the theory by describing hydrogen at least as well as Schrödinger theory. As we shall see, the Dirac theory was exceedingly successful in this, and furthermore, at several points in the theory the non-relativistic limit can be taken and the effect of relativity in one-electron atoms can be seen explicitly. This connection with the simpler theory will be made here wherever insight may be gained from doing so. One of the key advances brought about by the advent of quantum theory was that it defined eigenfunctions as well as the eigenvalues predicted by the Bohr theory.
The increasing precision of experiments on the Zeeman effect of many electron atoms requires an ever increasing knowledge of relativistic and radiative effects. The generalization of the Breit equation as proposed by Hegstrom includes all these effects up to order c— 3. In the non relativistic limit the resulting Hamiltonian is quite intricate, but we show in this paper that it is possible to explain almost all of its terms within the frame of classical electrodynamics. In particular, picturing the atoms as point-like particles with intrinsic magnetic moments, we show that the physical phenomena underlying the Breit equation and its recent extension are mainly two well-known classical phenomena : i) the interaction of the magnetic moment of the constituent particles with the magnetic field they experience in their rest frame; ii) the Thomas precession of the spins of the accelerated particles.