Wave-function Visualization of Core-induced Interaction of Non-hydrogenic Rydberg Atom in Electric Field

TL;DR

This paper visualizes the core-induced interactions in non-hydrogenic Rydberg atoms under electric fields through wave-function analysis, revealing interference patterns and explaining spectral measurements.

Contribution

It introduces a method to directly visualize core-induced interactions in non-hydrogenic Rydberg atoms using wave-function superpositions and interference patterns.

Findings

Wave-function patterns distinguish red and blue states.

Interference effects explain spectral oscillator strengths.

Core interactions are visualized directly in wave-functions.

Abstract

We have investigated the wave-function feature of Rydberg sodium in a uniform electric field and found that the core-induced interaction of non-hydrogenic atom in electric field can be directly visualized in the wave-function. As is well known, the hydrogen atom in electric field can be separated in parabolic coordinates (\eta, \xi), whose eigen-function can show a clear pattern towards negative and positive directions corresponding to the so-called red and blue states without ambiguity, respectively. It can be served as a complete orthogonal basis set to study the core-induced interaction of non-hydrogenic atom in electric field. Owing to complete different patterns of the probability distribution for red and blue states, the interaction can be visualized in the wave-function directly via superposition. Moreover, the constructive and destructive interferences between red and blue states are also observed in the wave-function, explicitly explaining the experimental measurement for the spectral oscillator strength.