Hartree-Fock calculation of the ground state energies of two-electron atoms in an intense magnetic field

Ground-state energies of two-electron atoms H-, He and Li+ embedded in a very strong magnetic field, are calculated using the Hartree-Fock method. Modifications to this method, necessitated by the presence of the intense magnetic field, are presented. The one-particle wavefunction contains a transverse part, which is determined by the magnetic field, and a longitudinal part, which is determined by the Coulomb interactions. The self-consistent field method is used to adjust the longitudinal function. For the strongest fields considered in this study, the improvement over previous variational estimates is between ten and twenty per cent. For lower fields, however, the present results contradict those by Mueller et al (Phys. Rev.; A11:789 (1975)) as a somewhat higher ground-state energy for the H- ion is obtained. (author)