Self-Consistent coupling of atomic orbitals to a moving charge

Abstract

We describe the time evolution of hydrogenic orbitals perturbed by a moving charge. Starting with the equation for an atom interacting with a charge, we use an eikonal representation of the total wave-function, followed by an eikonal approximation, to derive coupled differential equations for the temporal change of the orbitals and the charge's trajectory. The orbitals are represented by functions with complex exponents changing with time, describing electronic density and flux changes. For each orbital, we solve a set of six coupled differential equations; two of them are derived with a time-dependent variational procedure for the real and imaginary parts of the exponents, and the other four are the Hamilton equations of the positions and momenta of the moving charge. The molecular potentials are derived from the exact expressions for the electronic energies. Results of calculations for 1s and 2s orbitals show large variation of the real exponent parts over time, with respect to asymptotic values, and that imaginary parts remain small. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.