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arXiv:physics/0408025

The novel aspect of hydrogen atom: the fine structure and spin can be derived by single component wavefunction

H. Y. Cui

Published Aug 5, 2004• 3 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The fine structure of hydrogen energy was calculated by using the usual momentum-wavefunction relation directly, rather than establishing the well-known Dirac wave equation. As the results, the energy levels are completely the same as that of the Dirac wave equation, while the wavefunction is single component that is quite different from Dirac's four component wavefunction, the most important thing is that the present calculation brings out electronic spin in a new way which has never been reported and indicates that the electronic spin is a kind of orbital motion.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.physics/0408025

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The fine structure of hydrogen energy was calculated by using the usual momentum-wavefunction relation directly, rather than establishing the well-known Dirac wave equation. As the results, the energy levels are completely the same as that of the Dirac wave equation, while the wavefunction is single component that is quite different from Dirac's four component wavefunction, the most important thing is that the present calculation brings out electronic spin in a new way which has never been reported and indicates that the electronic spin is a kind of orbital motion.
Niels Bohr’s model of the hydrogen and hydrogen-like atoms, in which the electron is allowed to revolve in certain circular orbits around the nucleus, was extended by Arnold Sommerfeld to allow for the possibility of elliptical orbits. Each elliptical orbit was constrained by two quantization conditions specified by a positive integer nφ and a non-negative integer nr. If, in the presence of the attractive Coulomb force between the electron and the nucleus, the dynamics of the atom were taken to be governed by the Newtonian laws of motion, the energy Ɛ of the two-particle system was found to be a function of the positive integer n = nr + nφ. The atomic energy levels thus exhibited an n-fold degeneracy, which would be lifted in the presence of external electric or magnetic fields, thus accounting for the fine-structure of the spectral lines emitted by the atom—phenomena observed, respectively, in the Stark effect and the Zeeman effect. Sommerfeld also examined the behavior of his elliptical orbits by allowing the revolving electron to obey Einstein’s relativistic dynamics. In this case, the energy-level degeneracies were lifted (even in the absence of external perturbations), and the elliptical orbits were found to precess around the nucleus—similarly to the precession of, say, the orbit of the planet Mercury around the Sun. What is astonishing about Sommerfeld’s relativistic expression of the energy Ɛ as a function of nφ and nr is that it is precisely the same expression as obtained for hydrogen and hydrogen-like atoms from Dirac’s equation, which came more than a decade later. Recall that the spin of the electron was not yet discovered when Sommerfeld developed his model, and that in Dirac’s fully-relativistic quantum mechanics, the spectral fine-structure arises from the coupling of the electron’s spin to its orbital motion. The present paper provides a streamlined yet detailed account of Sommerfeld’s elliptical orbits in hopes of bringing about a deeper appreciation for the miraculous coincidence of Sommerfeld’s result with that derived from Dirac’s equation.
Abstract This chapter reiterates the quantum numbers for atomic orbitals, known from general chemistry, and places them into the context developed so far. It is sketched how the Schrodinger equation (SE) for the hydrogen atom hydrogen-like systems (one electron plus a nucleus of charge Z) is set up. When the nucleus is treated as a fixed point charge, the SE is only for the electron. The solutions of the SE can be obtained by switching to spherical polar coordinates, such that the variables are separable in terms of the electron distance from the nucleus, r, and two angles. The kinetic energy of the electron then has a radial component, and an angular component. The latter is associated with the angular momentum quantum number, which is codified by the letters s, p, d, f, and so forth. A step by step solution of the SE is provided later, in chapter 19.
The mere existence of stable atoms, and their arrangement into many-atom nanoscale structures, can only be explained by the laws of quantum mechanics. Indeed, the accumulated evidence regarding the internal structure of atoms motivated the formulation of quantum mechanics at the early twentieth century. Here we focus on single-electron (hydrogen-like) atoms. The dominance of the Coulomb central potential between the electron and nucleus, translates into a simple Schrödinger equation for their relative position distribution. Solving rigorously this equation reveals quantized energy levels, which explains the emission spectra of hydrogen-like atoms (Rydberg formula). The corresponding stationary probability density distributions for the electron around the nucleus are reminiscent of the Bohr model, where classical trajectories (orbits) are replaced by single-electron wave functions (orbitals). The degeneracies of different orbitals, associated with three quantum numbers, will later turn out to be critical for understanding many-electron atoms and the periodic table of the elements.
Schrodinger's equation predicts something very peculiar about the electron in the Hydrogen atom: its total energy must be equal to zero. Unfortunately, an analysis of a zero-energy wavefunction for the electron in the Hydrogen atom has not been attempted in the published literature. This paper provides such an analysis for the first time and uncovers a few interesting facts, including the fact that a "zero-energy wavefunction" is actually a quantized version of the classical wavefunction that has been known for decades.