A Helium Atom Confined by a Spherical Gaussian Potential Well

The helium atom confined by a non-impenetrable spherical box, i.e., a spherical Gaussian potential well which possesses finite height and range, is studied employing the exact diagonalization method. Total energies of the ground and three low-excited states are obtained as a function of the confined potential radii. We find that the confinement may cause accidental degeneracies between levels with different low-excited states and the inversion of the energy values. The results for the three-dimensional spherical potential well and the two-dimensional disc-like potential well are compared with each other: in general, the energies of the states decrease and the energy intervals between states increase with the reduction of the space dimensions.