Stability of hydrogen atom in non-ideal classical plasmas

The stability of a hydrogen atom embedded in classical nonideal plasma has been investigated. The interaction potential between the proton and the electron has been modeled by a pseudopotential, which is obtained from a sequential solution of Bogolyubov chain equations. The critical values of the plasma screening parameters have been determined quite accurately within the framework of the Rayleigh-Ritz variational method by employing an extensive wave function following a definitive prescription. Convergence of the results has been corroborated by increasing the number of terms in the wave function. A detailed study has been carried out on the effects of nonideality of plasma on the bound states for the density and temperature lying in the ranges of 2.7 × [1023–1026] m−3 and [104–105] K, respectively. It is found that the atom remains bound in the aforementioned density and temperature ranges.