Combined effect of Debye plasma environment and external electric field on hydrogen atom

We consider weakly coupled plasmas, characterized by Debye-Huckel model potential, and an external electric field along z-axis. Due to plasma environment the energy levels of atom are shifted up, bound states are merged to continuum. For external electric field the excited energy levels also split up; degenerate energy eigenvalues become nondegenerate. In the presence of external electric field, energy levels are shifted up and down, except ground state. The ground state energy value is shifted only down. Therefore, it is very interesting to study the combined effect of plasmas and external electric field on a simple atom (hydrogen). To calculate the energy levels and the corresponding states, we expand the wave function in terms of linear combination of the basis functions. The basis is generated by hydrogenic wave functions. Here, we estimate various plasma surroundings and electric field strengths. We observe converged results for the basis size 45, with angular momentum states up to eight. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3463708]