Calculation of ground- and excited-state potential energy curves for barium-rare gas complexes in a pseudopotential approach

Adiabatic potential curves for the ground state and several low-lying excited states of the barium atom interacting with Ne, Ar, Kr and Xe have been obtained from valence ab initio configuration-interaction calculations. Atomic cores are replaced by scalar-relativistic l-dependent pseudopotentials, while core-polarization potentials are used for describing correlation contributions of the rare-gas atoms and the Ba²⁺ cores. Implications of the resulting potential curves for the interpretation of experimental data are discussed, together with first applications of the curves for calculating absorption profiles of the (6s ²)¹S→(6p)¹P Ba transition. Received: 7 April 1998 / Accepted: 27 July 1998 / Published online: 12 October 1998