Adiabatic method for positronic atoms and molecules

Abstract

The adiabatic separation of electronic and positronic degrees of freedom is proposed. The positronic charge in expressions for the potential energy is partitioned between the electronic and positronic Hamiltonians. This partitioning assures an acceptable electron density distribution around the positron. Our adiabatic method gives good values of binding energies and annihilation rates for model systems, in which the positron is weakly bound. On the other hand, it does not work well if the wave function contains a significant contribution of the positronium cluster.