Abstract

A numerical study of electronic wave packets for the hydrogen atom in strong magnetic fields is discussed. The energy eigenvalues and eigenstates used for the wave packet propagation are found with the group-theoretic techniques espoused by Delande and Gay.¹ However, unlike the band matrix techniques used by them, we adopted sparse matrix techniques to minimize the storage requirements for the large number of states involved. Previous work on this problem has centered on spectroscopic information, such as energy level distributions for different magnetic field strengths. Recently, experiments by Yeazell et al.² have demonstrated that it is possible to study highly excited states of Rydberg atoms in a different way by exciting localized wave packets with short laser pulses. In this way, the measurement of wave packets excited by the pump probe method of earlier experiments may be modelled in terms of the magnetic field problem. We will discuss the resulting wave packet behavior, such as localization and periodicity, and we will compare this method and a classical mechanics analysis.

© 1990 Optical Society of America