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Determination of Interatomic Potentials

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 2016

R. J. Dyne
R. J. Dyne*
Affiliation:
Department of Physics, University of Queensland
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Extract

In the atmosphere of the Sun, most spectral lines are broadened by collisions between the radiating atom and neutral particles. The interaction between two atoms is usually represented by the multipole expansion of the total interaction potential. For two neutral atoms, the first non-zero term in this expansion arises from induced dipole-induced dipole forces and is proportional to r-6. Most calculations of broadening due to neutral atoms have assumed this van der Waals interaction, V(r) = —C6 r-6, between the atoms. Such an assumption is only valid if the interatomic separation is much greater than the sum of the radii of the two atoms so that no overlap occurs and only the leading term of the multipole expansion need be considered. However, in fitting the wings of solar line profiles, O’Mara found that the value of the van der Waals constant, C6, had to be increased by up to a factor of ten in order to obtain agreement between theoretical and observed profiles.

Type
Contributions
Information
Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , July 1971 , pp. 38 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © Astronomical Society of Australia 1971

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References

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