2025/01/10 by Aaron Bondy, G. W. F. Drake, Bondy, Aaron T. +9 · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Chemical Physics Studies #Atomic Physics (physics.atom-ph) #Atomic and Molecular Physics #FOS: Physical sciences #Quantum, superfluid, helium dynamics
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2501.06096
openalex publication_date 2025/01/10 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Recent measurements of the ionization energies of the Rydberg 1P states of helium for principal quantum number n = 24 and higher present a new challenge to theoretical atomic physics. A long-standing obstacle to high precision atomic theory for three-body systems is a rapid loss of accuracy for variational calculations with increasing principal quantum number n. We show that this problem can be overcome with the use of a ``triple" basis set in Hylleraas coordinates. Nonrelativistic energies accurate to 23 significant figures are obtained with basis sets of relatively modest size (6744 terms). Relativistic and quantum electrodynamic effects are calculated, including an estimate of terms of order mα6 from a 1/n3 extrapolation, resulting in an estimated accuracy of ±1 kHz. The calculated ionization energy of 5704 980.348(1) MHz is in excellent agreement with the experimental value 5704 980.312(95) MHz. These results establish the ionization energy of the 1s24p 1P1 state as an absolute point of reference for transitions to lower-lying states, and they confirm an 11σ disagreement between theory and experiment in the triplet spectrum of helium. Results are also given for the 1s24p 3PJ states in agreement with a recent experiment on the triplet Rydberg series, thereby confirming a discrepancy of of 0.468 ± 0.055 MHz for the ionization energy of the 1s2s 3S1 state.