Asymptotics of Rydberg States for the Hydrogen Atom

The asymptotics of Rydberg states, i.e., highly excited bound states of the hydrogen atom Hamiltonian, and various expectations involving these states are investigated. We show that suitable linear combinations of these states, appropriately rescaled and regarded as functions either in momentum space or configuration space, are highly concentrated on classical momentum space or configuration space Kepler orbits respectively, for large quantum numbers. Expectations of momentum space or configuration space functions with respect to these states are related to time-averages of these functions over Kepler orbits. Received: 8 November 1996 / Accepted: 13 January 1997