Spherically confined hydrogenic atoms under classical non‐ideal plasmas: Scaling law for the critical cage size

Abstract

AbstractAn elegant calculation is carried out to investigate the effects of the non‐ideality of classical plasma on the energy levels of the hydrogenic atoms held in a spherical cage. Organized effect of the non‐ideal classical plasma is described by an analytical pseudopotential which contains the Debye length and non‐ideality parameter as parameters. Convergent results for the bound states are obtained variationally by utilizing a large trail function containing cosine term which automatically takes care of the requisite boundary conditions. For the plasma‐free case, our results are in excellent agreement with the most accurate results available in the literature. An inclusive study is made to explore the changes emerging in the energy levels due to the variation of the plasma parameters and cage size. Special emphasis is made on the determination of critical cage size precisely. The present study specifically reveals that the increasing plasma non‐ideality leads to the elongation of the critical cage size. Moreover, it is empirically found that the critical cage size for a given hydrogenic atom can be obtained from a scaling law.