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Volume 13: Pages 350-357, 2000
Many‐Body Coulomb Problem in the Phase‐Energy Representation
John L. Bohn
JILA, University of Colorado and National Institute of Standards and Technology, Boulder, Colorado 80309‐0440 U.S.A.
The many‐body quantum‐mechanical Coulomb problem is exactly reformulated in a “phase‐energy” representation. Rather than solving for a many‐component wave‐function, this formulation focuses on a set of eigenphases that document the evolution of a system from its compact to its fragmented limit. The eigenphases in turn hinge on the explicit evaluation of kinetic and potential energies as the system evolves. An illustration using the doubly excited states of helium shows that information on the nature of the eigenchannels is encoded in these energies.
Keywords: many‐body Coulomb dynamics, phase‐energy representation, eigenphases, R‐matrix evolution, hyperspherical coordinates
Received: May 13, 2000; Published online: December 15, 2008