Information-entropic measures in free and confined hydrogen atom

TL;DR

This paper investigates various information-entropic measures in free and confined hydrogen atoms using exact wave functions, revealing new insights into their behavior under different confinement conditions.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analytical and numerical analysis of multiple entropic measures in confined hydrogen atoms, including new expressions and systematic results.

Findings

Entropic measures decrease with confinement radius at small r_c.

High-lying states show increased localization at small r_c.

New features in entropic behavior are identified for confined states.

Abstract

Shannon entropy ($S$), R{\'e}nyi entropy ($R$), Tsallis entropy ($T$), Fisher information ($I$) and Onicescu energy ($E$) have been explored extensively in both \emph{free} H atom (FHA) and \emph{confined} H atom (CHA). For a given quantum state, accurate results are presented by employing respective \emph{exact} analytical wave functions in $r$ space. The $p$-space wave functions are generated from respective Fourier transforms$-$for FHA these can be expressed analytically in terms of Gegenbauer polynomials, whereas in CHA these are computed numerically. \emph{Exact} mathematical expressions of $R_r^{\alpha}, R_p^{\beta}$, $T_r^{\alpha}, T_p^{\beta}, E_r, E_p$ are derived for \emph{circular} states of a FHA. Pilot calculations are done taking order of entropic moments ($\alpha, \beta$) as $(\frac{3}{5}, 3)$ in $r$ and $p$ spaces. A detailed, systematic analysis is performed for both FHA and CHA with respect to state indices $n,l$, and with confinement radius ($r_c$) for the latter. In a CHA, at small $r_{c}$, kinetic energy increases, whereas $S_{\rvec}, R^{\alpha}_{\rvec}$ decrease with growth of $n$, signifying greater localization in high-lying states. At moderate $r_{c}$, there exists an interplay between two mutually opposing factors: (i) radial confinement (localization) and (ii) accumulation of radial nodes with growth of $n$ (delocalization). Most of these results are reported here for the first time, revealing many new interesting features. Comparison with literature results, wherever possible, offers excellent agreement.