Long-range interaction between Hg*(1,3P1) and noble gas atoms

The long-range, van der Waals interaction is considered for the system M^*(nsnp ^1,3P₁)/noble gas (¹S₀), where M^* is any atom with two valence electrons outside closed shells. An important “correlation” effect is shown to arise due to the different symmetry properties of the spatial parts of the singlet and triplet wavefunctions; this is the direct analogue of the effect of angular correlation in the ground-state problem. Detailed calculations are carried out for Hg^*(6s6p ^1,3P₁) interacting with the noble gases.