Date of Award

Summer 1994

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Physics

Committee Director

Gary E. Copeland

Committee Director

Alex Dalgarno

Committee Member

J. Wallace Van Orden

Committee Member

Mark D. Havey

Committee Member

Lawrence B. Weinstein

Committee Member

Robert L. Ake

Abstract

Radiative transitions of hydrogenlike atoms in external magnetic fields of strength applicable to magnetic white dwarfs, i.e. B < 103 megagauss, have been investigated for field-free principal quantum numbers n < 6. Finite proton mass corrections are included. Relativistic corrections are also investigated. Transition probabilities are determined using the length, velocity, and acceleration forms of the electric dipole operator. Discrepancies between previous calculations and magnetic white dwarf observations of low-lying boundbound transitions have been studied. New results for high-lying transitions are also obtained.

The transition probability for the hydrogenlike 2s two-photon decay has been investigated and shown to increase substantially with field strength. The computed two-photon spectra show resonances and interference minima. Anomalous Zeeman depolarization features are found in computed two-photon polarization spectra of alkali atoms in laboratory strength magnetic fields. A previously observed fine structure depolarization feature is shown to decay with decreasing field strength.

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DOI

10.25777/fxg0-7j95

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