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The hydrogen atom in an electric field: closed-orbit theory with bifurcating orbits

T Bartsch, J Main and G Wunner

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Closed-orbit theory provides a general approach to the semiclassical description of photo-absorption spectra of arbitrary atoms in external fields, the simplest of which is the hydrogen atom in an electric field. Yet, despite its apparent simplicity, a semiclassical quantization of this system by means of closed-orbit theory has not been achieved so far. It is the aim of this paper to close that gap. We first present a detailed analytic study of the closed classical orbits and their bifurcations. We then derive a simple form of the uniform semiclassical approximation for the bifurcations that is suitable for an inclusion into a closed-orbit summation. By means of a generalized version of the semiclassical quantization by harmonic inversion, we succeed in calculating high-quality semiclassical spectra for the hydrogen atom in an electric field.


PACS

34.10.+x General theories and models of atomic and molecular collisions and interactions (including statistical theories, transition state, stochastic and trajectory models, etc.)

31.15.xg Semiclassical methods

32.30.-r Atomic spectra

Subjects

Atomic and molecular physics

Computational physics

Dates

Issue 6 (28 March 2003)

Received 20 December 2002

Published 4 March 2003



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