Planetary atoms
- 25 March 1977
- journal article
- Published by The Royal Society in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A. Mathematical and Physical Sciences
- Vol. 353 (1673) , 289-297
- https://doi.org/10.1098/rspa.1977.0035
Abstract
A planetary atom is an atom or ion in a state, with two or more excited electrons, which has negligible overlap with the ground state or first few excited states. Classical mechanics and Einstein-Brillouin-Keller quantization are used to study them. They are not produced by direct (one-photon) optical excitation from low states, statistically they predominate over states which can be produced by direct optical excitation, and they are long-lived. Each state is a member of a series labelled by a half-odd-integer scaling number $\nu $. The states of the series have energies which are approximately proportional to $1/\nu ^{2}$. The energies of the states of a planetary atom depend on the charge of the parent ion, and not on its detailed structure. Electron energy loss spectroscopy is a possible means of studying planetary atoms experimentally.
Keywords
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