Abstract

Spectroscopy of atoms has for a long time proven to be an important fool in the study of the concepts of quantum mechanics. One of the problems is the three-body Coulomb problem, which currently attracts much attention and is still not fully solved. Interest is focusing on highly doubly excited states of two-electron atoms, which show a breakdown of the independent-particle model owing to correlated motion of both excited electrons. Although helium is the best atom for these studies, its doubly excited states are difficult to reach with present-day lasers. We therefore choose barium as a model system.

© 1991 Optical Society of America