Wavefunctions and Pseudopotential for Alkali Charge Transfer

A set of wavefunctions and pseudopotential for alkali atoms is proposed, which should facilitate calculations of excitation and charge transfer in collisions of alkali ions and atoms. In this model, the inner core of electrons is replaced by an exponential charge cloud, and the Schrödinger equation for the outer electron in the combined field of the nucleus plus the inner cloud is numerically integrated. The resulting wavefunctions are fitted by analytical functions having the same general form as hydrogenic functions, and therefore the formalism readily available for H++H collisions can be directly applied to the one-electron model for alkali ion-alkali atom collisions. Since the functions proposed here are essentially exact for the Hamiltonian used, they do not lead to probability flow at ∞.