The wave equation for two electrons in an external Coulomb field (helium-like atoms) has been shown to be a problem in a three-dimensional half-space. The wave-equation becomes quasi-separable in inertial coordinates. This allows to work out the electron motion in the frame of principal inertia axes. We find that non-adiabatic coupling terms constitute a fictitious force and lead to a deformation of the static potential surface. Incoming and outgoing modes of electron pairs are studied in detail, and applied to the threshold ionization of hydrogen-like atoms by electrons. Our analysis confirms the classical work by Wannier. However, we go beyond Wannier and present bending and stretch vibrations of electron pairs. The bending vibration has no influence onto the total ionization cross-section. The pair formation below threshold destroys the existence of high double Rydberg resonances. Finally, we describe the propagation of an electron pair through a linear chain of Rydberg atoms.
The wave equation for two electrons in an external Coulomb field (helium-like atoms) has been shown to be a problem in a three-dimensional half-space. The wave-equation becomes quasi-separable in inertial coordinates. This allows to work out the electron motion in the frame of principal inertia axes. We find that non-adiabatic coupling terms constitute a fictitious force and lead to a deformation of the static potential surface. Incoming and outgoing modes of electron pairs are studied in detail, and applied to the threshold ionization of hydrogen-like atoms by electrons. Our analysis confirms the classical work by Wannier. However, we go beyond Wannier and present bending and stretch vibrations of electron pairs. The bending vibration has no influence onto the total ionization cross-section. The pair formation below threshold destroys the existence of high double Rydberg resonances. Finally, we describe the propagation of an electron pair through a linear chain of Rydberg atoms.
This dissertation deals with thermal collisions of highly excited (Rydberg) atoms with atoms in the ground state. The inelastic processes in these collisions manifest themselves mainly in broadening of Rydberg spectral lines. Advancements in tunable laser techniques allowed observation of the ion-pair formation in such collisions as well. Theoretical treatments of these collisions can be separated in two groups according to the principal quantum number n of the Rydberg atom: impulse approximation (n≥30), and adiabatic approximation (n≤20). Both approaches are presented in application to spectral line broadening. The off-shell modification of the impulse approximation is developed. The pseudopotentials for singlet and triplet electron scattering from Rb and Cs are re-constructed from the phase shift data. These potentials are used to calculate the off-shell amplitudes, which are employed to obtain broadening cross sections. The taking into account of the off-shell effects is shown to improve the agreement with the experiment in the intermediate region of principal quantum number 20<n<30. The adiabatic approximation in the framework of Borodin-Kazansky theory is improved to include the exact Coulomb Green's function and the final radius of the ground state atom. The adiabatic theory explains the oscillations with n in the experimental broadening cross sections. The adiabatic theory is developed for the ion-pair formation. The zero-range-potential-Coulomb-field model is employed to generate realistic energy curves. The model allows exact numerical solution, which is used to verify the analytical theory that is set forth to describe the non-adiabatic transitions at large internuclear distances. Adiabatic calculations rely on the complex plane technique that requires the analytical continuation of the energy curves in the complex plane of parameters. Development of the algorithms for the continuation of Mathieu and Whittaker's functions, used in these calculations, constitutes an important methodological achievement of this work. Although all applications of the theories are worked out for alkali-metal atoms, the results can be applied to other atomic species as well.
We investigate scattering of electrons from atoms in the nonrelativistic energy range. In contrast to the pioneer work by Born, we take correlation properly into account and describe electrons by waves rather than by mass points. To this end, we start from a novel parabolic partial differential equation, which resembles the inhomogeneous heat equation. Calculation of the kernels for incoming and outgoing waves allows us to formulate initial value problems. A converging Fresnel distribution is shown to control the incident electron and pulls the target electron onto an equilibrium location. The electron-electron interaction is here attractive. Finally, the two electrons are attracted by the nucleus and arrive at a triple condensation point, where they form a compound state comparable to a Cooper pair. This three-body configuration is highly unstable, described by an unstable Fresnel distribution, and leads finally to excited target states plus an escaping electron. There is no way for a one-step transition. The excitation process always goes through a ladder consisting of Fresnel states. The Wannier mode has been identified as an unstable Fresnel distribution, which is not an energy eigenstate, but it is an eigenstate of the action curvature. This unusual mode cannot be expected as a discrete line in a Rydberg spectrum, but seems to manifest itself as noise. We show that this noise is heavily suppressed near the threshold.
Contemporary views on the formation of dynamic nonlinear resonances in isolated intermediate Rydberg quasi-molecular complexes formed by a single elementary act upon the slow collision highly excited atoms are discussed. A relation between the emergence of dynamic resonance and the quasi-intersection of atomic terms is revealed in the quasi-classical approximation. Relationships between the widths of dynamic resonances and the dipole matrix element leading to the corresponding quasi-intersections are determined. The physical reasons for the dynamic chaos regime are formulated. A quasi-classical statistical description is given of the diffusion ionization of an atomic complex with a dense network of quasi-intersections of terms. Development of the stochastic instability of the Rydberg electron trajectories due charge exchange inside the collision complex is considered. The effect the narrowing region of stochastic motion has when passing through the Coulomb convergence of the levels with a simultaneous drop in the ionization rate of quasi-molecular systems is predicted for external statistical magnetic and electric fields under conditions of Förster resonance.
We study the field-ionization threshold behavior when a Rydberg atom is ionized by a short single-cycle pulse field. Both hydrogen and sodium atoms are considered. The required threshold field amplitude is found to scale inversely with the binding energy when the pulse duration becomes shorter than the classical Rydberg period, and, thus, more weakly bound electrons require larger fields for ionization. This threshold scaling behavior is confirmed by both three-dimensional classical trajectory Monte Carlo simulations and numerically solving the time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation. More surprisingly, the same scaling behavior in the short pulse limit is also followed by the ionization thresholds for much lower bound states, including the hydrogen ground state. An empirical formula is obtained from a simple model, and the dominant ionization mechanism is identified as a nonzero spatial displacement of the electron. This displacement ionization should be another important mechanism beyond the tunneling ionization and the multiphoton ionization. In addition, an ``ionization window'' is shown to exist for the ionization of Rydberg states, which may have potential applications to selectively modify and control the Rydberg-state population of atoms and molecules.
This thesis is a theoretical study of the behavior of electrons in atoms and molecules subjected to external electromagnetic fields. Three electronic systems have been central in this work, the atomic and quasimolecular Rydberg states and the carbon allotrope graphene. The exaggerated properties of the highly excited Rydberg atoms, such as long lifetime, large spatial extension and low binding energy make them excellent candidates for both theoretical and experimental considerations. The analytical solutions of the hydrogen atom in quantum mechanics provide a good description for most Rydberg atoms. This is exploited in the work presented in this thesis and the accompanying papers, where we show results of numerical computations on interacting Rydberg atoms, with and without the presence of radiating fields, as well as dynamic Rydberg wave packets influenced by a train of femtosecond laser pulses. In the final part of the thesis the optical process of high-order harmonic generation in an extended molecular structure, represented by graphene, is considered. Rydberg atoms have a large dipole moment due to the large average electronic radius in the atom, which leads to a very strong dipole-dipole coupling between interacting particles in a gas of cold Rydberg atoms. This interaction, which is dependent on the internuclear separation between the atoms, induces a shift in the energy levels, which again prohibits the excitation of more than one atom in the gas, an effect commonly known as the Rydberg blockade. A correlated behavior is observed for the intrashell transitions in mutually excited Rydberg atoms. The microwave field driven dynamics is significantly supressed for internuclear distances below a given conditional radius which scales linearly with the principal quantum number n. Such an entangled electronic behavior may open for the realization of quantum gates applied in quantum informatics. The long-range interaction of Rydberg atoms is dominated by the dipole-dipole terms. Nevertheless, the investigation of two interacting Rydberg atoms, without the influence of electromagnetic radiation, has shown that the lower order multipolar terms play a vital role in the energy shifts as well as for the electronic probability distributions. We found that the energy curves, when including all multipole orders, correspond to both repulsive and attractive states with a stronger repulsion than attraction. We also propose a laser assisted approach for stabilization of Rydberg gases by controlled transitions between such attractive and repulsive energy states. Single-electron ionization of a dynamic Rydberg wave packet confined within a single energy level has been investigated. The ionization probability of an intrashell Rydberg wave packet depends strongly on the degree of polarization. For a wave packet driven repeatedly between the circular (least polarized) state and the linear (most polarized) state by a rotating microwave field and subjected to a train of femtosecond laser pulses, the ionization probability will depend crucially on the laser repetition rate and number of pulses. The angular-resolved ionization probability and energy distribution in the continuum are also influenced by these parameters. The last part of the thesis is devoted to the study of high-order harmonic generation (HHG) in graphene. In the simple man’s model HHG can be described by an electron that is ionized and driven in an external field, after which it returns to the parent atom and recombines, emitting a high-energy photon with frequency that is a multiple of the incident laser frequency. We show that the harmonic spectra obtained from the interaction with linearly as well as circularly polarized femtosecond lasers yield harmonics up the classical limit for extended molecules. In contrast to diatomic molecules, the stable grid structure of graphene ensures that the harmonic generation cutoff remains constant with increasing signal power as the graphene diameter extends beyond the classical limit. Additionally, for circularly polarized lasers harmonics exceeding the classical predictions have been observed.
For nonrelativistic two-electron atoms, we employ a phase-amplitude method to derive an energy-dependent three-body force which controls the dynamics of the atom near the threshold for double escape. Its potential energy has been taken into account to derive beyond a static adiabatic basis a novel partial differential equation that replaces an adiabatic basis. That equation whose solutions span a Banach space has been solved exactly in the energy window near threshold. In that energy range, we find the formation of unstable electron pairs, comparable to Cooper pairs. In contrast to Cooper pairs, our pairs are bound by dominant correlation rather than by the coupling to a phonon field. These ingredients are suspected to allow for a super current independent of the temperature.