Ground states of the atoms H, He,...., Ne and their singly positive ions in strong magnetic fields: The high field regime

Abstract

The electronic structure of the ground and some excited states of neutral atoms with the nuclear charge numbers $1\leq Z \leq 10$ and their single positive ions are investigated by means of our 2D mesh Hartree-Fock method for strong magnetic fields $0.5\leq \gamma \leq 10000$. For $\gamma=10000$ the ground state configurations of all the atoms and ions considered are given by fully spin-polarized configurations of single-electron orbitals with magnetic quantum numbers ranging from m=0 to m=-N+1 where N is the number of the electrons. Focusing on the fully spin polarized situation we provide critical values of the magnetic field strength for which crossovers with respect to the spatial symmetries of the ground state take place. It is found that the neutral atoms and singly charged positive ions with $2\leq Z \leq 5$ have one fully spin-polarized ground state configuration whereas for $6\leq Z \leq 10$ one intermediate fully spin-polarized configuration with an orbital of 2p_0 type occurs.