Published April 5, 2024 | Version v1
Journal article

Orbital collapse and dual states of the 5g electrons in superheavy elements

  • 1. Department of Physics, Saint Petersburg State University, Universitetskaya 7-9, Saint Petersburg 199034, Russia
  • 2. Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute named by B.P. Konstantinov of National Research Center "Kurchatov Institute", Orlova Roscha 1, Gatchina 188300, Leningrad Region, Russia

Description

The problem of orbital collapse of the 5g and 6f electrons in atoms of superheavy elements (SHEs) is considered. Previously, the presence of the orbital collapse was established for the 4f and 5f elements of the periodic table. Because of the large centrifugal term for the f and g electrons, the effective radial potential has two wells, one narrow and deep and the other wide but shallow. Depending on the external parameters, the electron can be localized in either the outer well with low binding energy and large average radius or the inner well with higher energy and smaller radius. In this paper, we demonstrate the existence of the orbital collapse for the 5g electrons when changing the total angular momentum J of the atom. We also find that for some SHEs two different solutions of the same Dirac-Fock equations may coexist, with the 5g electron localized in either the inner or outer well. In both cases, the radial wave functions are nodeless. The problem of the dual-state coexistence is studied by the configuration-interaction method in the Dirac-Fock-Sturm orbital basis as well.

Additional details

Identifiers

DOI
10.1103/PhysRevA.109.042807;
arXiv
arXiv:2402.02609;
Crossref Funder ID
10.13039/501100012190;

Publishing Information

Journal Title
Physical Review A
Journal Volume
109
Journal Issue
4
Journal Page Range
8 pgs.
ISSN
1094-1622

Optional Information

Copyright
©2024 American Physical Society
Contract/Grant/Project number
075-10-2020-117
Notes
Contact Email: i.tupitsyn@spbu.ru; Record automatically processed
Funding organization
Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation