Structural properties of Li atom under quantum and classical plasmas: A composite variational framework

Structural properties of 1s²nl (²L) n = 2–5, l = 0–4; where, n and l are the principal quantum number and orbital angular momentum quantum number, respectively] states of Li atom embedded in classical weakly coupled plasma (WCP) and dense quantum plasma (DQP) have been discussed. The Debye-Hckel potential or the screened-Coulomb potential (SCP) and exponential-cosine-screened Coulomb potential (ECSCP) have been used to mimic the WCP and DQP, respectively. Li atom has been treated as a composite system with a frozen core Li⁺ ion and a chemically active valence electron. The Rayleigh-Ritz variational method with Hylleraas-type basis set has been used to estimate the energy eigenvalue of 1s² (¹S) state of Li⁺ ion core and a pure exponential basis has been considered to compute the energy of nl (²L) states of the valence electron of Li atom. The influence of ECSCP and SCP on the radial probability distribution of the valence electron of the Li atom has also been studied.