English

Semiclassical quantization of the hydrogen atom in crossed electric and magnetic fields

Chaotic Dynamics 2009-11-07 v1 Atomic Physics

Abstract

The S-matrix theory formulation of closed-orbit theory recently proposed by Granger and Greene is extended to atoms in crossed electric and magnetic fields. We then present a semiclassical quantization of the hydrogen atom in crossed fields, which succeeds in resolving individual lines in the spectrum, but is restricted to the strongest lines of each n-manifold. By means of a detailed semiclassical analysis of the quantum spectrum, we demonstrate that it is the abundance of bifurcations of closed orbits that precludes the resolution of finer details. They necessitate the inclusion of uniform semiclassical approximations into the quantization process. Uniform approximations for the generic types of closed-orbit bifurcation are derived, and a general method for including them in a high-resolution semiclassical quantization is devised.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.nlin/0212017,
  title  = {Semiclassical quantization of the hydrogen atom in crossed electric and magnetic fields},
  author = {T. Bartsch and J. Main and G. Wunner},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:nlin/0212017},
  year   = {2009}
}