Ground state properties of the screened helium atom under harmonic confinement

Abstract

In this contribution, we show electronic property results for the ground state of the helium atom screened by a Debye plasma under an isotropic harmonic confinement as a function of the screening length (λD) and the angular frequency (ω0). The associate Hamiltonian is solved by expanding the wave function in the Hylleraas basis to incorporate the electron correlation in a simple manner. Furthermore, in order to compare with other findings the Hartree–Fock approach is implemented using a numerical grid method. The main results show that the total energy reaches the ionization threshold by the action of the electron coupling with the plasma medium and the strength of the harmonic confinement. The electron–electron average distance shows the compression of the system as the Debye plasma and the harmonic interactions become strongest (low λD and large ω0 values). We found acceptable results for the electron correlation energy when separate interactions are considered. In the absence of both interactions, the findings are in excellent agreement with other theoretical results.