Variational energies for highly excited states of the helium atom

Abstract

The efficient correlated variational wave functions used previously to study the higher 1 sns states of helium have been extended to other states of the helium atom, 1 snp (n ≤ 23), 2pnp1P (n ≤ 25), and 2pnp3P (n ≤ 25); similar uncorrelated wave functions were used for 1snd (n ≤ 21), 2pnp1D (n ≤ 10), and 2pnp3D (n ≤ 10). Attempts to use the same techniques for the 2pnp1,3S states appear to converge variationally to the energies of the 2s21S and 2s3s3S states respectively. Comparison is made with experimental results where appropriate, and agreement is excellent except in the case of the 1snd states above n = 13.A search was made for excited states of H− in each of these configurations, but no new states were found.