Journal of Physics A Mathematical and General
Kinetic energy and ground-state electron densities as fingerprints of wavefunction entanglement in two-electron spin-compensated atomic models
N. H. March, J. Negro, Luis Miguel Nieto
Abstract
We take as a starting point the ground-state electron density in two-electron model atoms in which Coulomb confinement in the He atom is first replaced by harmonic restoring forces. Switching off electron–electron interactions, one readily constructs a third-order differential equation for the ground-state electron density, as in the recent work of March and Ludeña (2004 Phys. Lett. A 330 16). We then switch on two different model interactions, first in the so-called Hookean atom going back to Kestner and Sinanoglu (1962 Phys. Rev. 128 2687), in which e 2 / r 12 is retained as in He, and secondly in the Moshinsky (1968 Am. J. Phys. 36 52) atom in which Kr 2 12 /2 is switched on. Some analyticity properties of the low-order linear homogeneous differential equations which result are next studied. He-like atomic ions are then treated in the limit of large atomic number Z . In this latter case, one identifies both the electron–nuclear cusp, or equivalently Kato's theorem, and the corresponding electron–electron cusp in the ground-state spatial wavefunction Ψ( r 1 , r 2 ). A final comment concerns quantum information and entanglement in relation to the recent work of Amovilli and March (2004 Phys. Rev. A 69 054302).