On the classical treatment of the Stark effect in hydrogen atoms

Abstract

A classical model of the hydrogen atom in a static electric field is studied, basing upon the work [ Hooker A. et al, {\it Phys. Rev. A}, 55 (1997) 4609 ]. In that work the electrons are supposed to move along Kepler orbits around the nucleus, while interacting with the external field. That classical model reproduces very well the true energy shift of the linear Stark effect. The agreement with the second order effect is poor. It is shown here that the results for the quadratic Stark effect may be considerably improved if the electrons are still allowed to move along classical trajectories, but whose initial conditions are statistically sampled from a distribution resembling the quantum mechanical one.