Binding weakly interacting partners: a study of Ca–He2 and its isotopomers

Abstract

We present in this paper binding energies and structures of non-rotating weakly bound 40Ca– n He2 triatomic complexes. Two kind of systems are discussed: bosonic (n = 4) and fermionic (n = 3) complexes at its singlet state (nuclear spin S = 0). Three different coordinate systems and methods have been used to solve the relevant Schrodinger equation: variational calculations (1) using satellite coordinates and a discrete variable representation of radial functions; (2) employing pair coordinates and products of distributed Gaussian functions as basis functions; and (3) variational/Diffusion Monte Carlo calculations in Cartesian coordinates. The potential energy surface is represented as the addition of pair potentials. By using the most realistic interaction between each pair of particles, present results from the three methods are in fair agreement. Only two bound states for each system are found in our computations.