Calculations of the excited states of atoms

The possibility of calculating the approximate wave functions of the excited states of a many-electron atom by means of extremalization of the variation functional is discussed. The calculation of helium 1s2s¹S and X-ray K-state of neon was carried out in this way assuming the wave functions expressed in the analytical form. The results obtained are satisfactory compared with those obtained by other methods as well as compared with experiment.The author would like to thank Dr. E. Antoník for many discussions on the problems of this paper and the management of the Institute of Technical Physics for its all-round support. He also thanks his wife and Mrs. K. Trnková for carefully carrying out the tedious calculations.