Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics
Effect of the diamagnetic interaction on the intensity of the radiation lines of an atom in a magnetic field
Vitalii D Ovsiannikov, V V Chernushkin
Abstract
Under the conditions of the total Paschen-Back effect the diamagnetic interaction determines the dependence of the intensity of the Zeeman components of atomic radiation lines on a magnetic field. The change in the matrix elements of the radiative transitions is due to the magnetically induced corrections to the wavefunctions of the initial and final states, whose contributions are of the same order of magnitude for the head lines of the optical series. For the high-frequency lines the positive corrections to the matrix element from the wavefunction of the upper level dominate. A magnetic field also induces dipole radiative transitions with selection rules for the orbital angular momentum | Δ l | ≥ 3. The matrix elements of such transitions increase rapidly with the energy of the upper level, making possible efficient single-photon population of the dipole-inaccessible Rydberg states in moderate magnetic fields.