The ground state of the carbon atom in strong magnetic fields

Abstract

The ground and a few excited states of the carbon atom in external uniform magnetic fields are calculated by means of our 2D mesh Hartree-Fock method for field strengths ranging from zero up to 2.35 10^9 T. With increasing field strength the ground state undergoes six transitions involving seven different electronic configurations which belong to three groups with different spin projections S_z=-1,-2,-3. For weak fields the ground state configuration arises from the field-free 1s^2 2s^2 2p_0 2p_{-1}, S_z=-1 configuration. With increasing field strength the ground state involves the four S_z=-2 configurations 1s^22s2p_0 2p_{-1}2p_{+1}, 1s^22s2p_0 2p_{-1}3d_{-2}, 1s^22p_0 2p_{-1}3d_{-2}4f_{-3} and 1s^22p_{-1}3d_{-2}4f_{-3}5g_{-4}, followed by the two fully spin polarized S_z=-3 configurations 1s2p_02p_{-1}3d_{-2}4f_{-3}5g_{-4} and 1s2p_{-1}3d_{-2}4f_{-3}5g_{-4}6h_{-5}. The last configuration forms the ground state of the carbon atom in the high field regime \gamma>18.664. The above series of ground state configurations is extracted from the results of numerical calculations for more than twenty electronic configurations selected due to some general energetical arguments.