Calculation on some excited states of helium and lithium

Abstract

Rydberg defects for some excited states of Li and He have been calculated using anti-symmetrized products of core and Rydberg orbital wave functions. Electron exchange makes an important contribution to the defect for the s and p series. For the s series electron correlation is relatively unimportant, for the p series correlation accounts for about 40 per cent of the defect and for the d series (and higher) correlation accounts for nearly all the defect. The relevance of these results to Rydberg defects of heavier atoms and molecules is briefly discussed.