Eur. Phys. J. D 53, 303-307 (2009)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2009-00146-1

One-photon two-electron transitions for metastable helium

¹ Center for Theoretical Atomic and Molecular Physics, The Academy of Fundamental and Interdisciplinary Sciences, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, 150080, P.R. China
² Institute of Atomic and Molecular Sciences, Academia Sinica, PO Box 23-166, Taipei, 106, Taiwan

Corresponding author: ^a skar@hit.edu.cn

Received: 26 December 2008
Revised: 28 March 2009
Published online: 8 May 2009

Abstract

We have obtained very accurate excitation energies for helium corresponding to the transitions 2p^{2 3}P^e ↦nln'l' ³D^o using highly correlated Hylleraas-type wave functions. The doubly excited 2p^{2 3}P^e metastable bound state energy is obtained using Ritz variational principle. The upper bound of 2p^{2 3}P^e energy is –0.7105001556783 a.u., which is close to the best results –0.71050015567833 [R. Hilger et al., Chem. Phys. Lett. 262, 400 (1996)]. We employ complex-coordinate rotation method to obtain ³D^o resonances. The ³D^o resonance energies and widths along with one-photon two-electron transition energies are reported.