Application of Thomas-Fermi model to a negative hydrogen ion in a strong electric field

TL;DR

This paper uses the Thomas-Fermi model to analyze the properties and stability of a negative hydrogen ion in strong electric fields, including size, energy, polarizability, and collective oscillations.

Contribution

It applies the Thomas-Fermi model to a negative hydrogen ion in strong fields, studying stability barriers, critical fields, and frequency-dependent instability mechanisms.

Findings

The ion's equilibrium size, energy, and polarizability are calculated.

A stability barrier exists and vanishes at a critical electric field.

High-frequency fields induce a stripping instability at lower amplitudes.

Abstract

Thomas-Fermi model is applied to describe some basic properties of a negative hydrogen ion in a strong electric field. The equilibrium ionic size, energy and polarizability of the ion are calculated. Collective modes of the dipole oscillations are regarded. A barrier, due to which the ion is in a stable state, is studied. The barrier vanishes at some large value of the electric field, which is defined as a critical value. The dependence of the critical field on frequency is studied. At high frequencies a stripping mechanism for instability arises. At the resonant frequency comparatively low amplitude of the electric field causes the stripping instability.