A Modern Approach to L-S Coupling in the Theory of Atomic Spectra

• Graham Doggett ^[1] ; Brian Sutcliffe ^[1]
  1. [1] University of York

     University of York

     Reino Unido

     
• Localización: Journal of chemical education, ISSN 0021-9584, Vol. 75, Nº 1 (January), 1998, págs. 110-114
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • In a recent article on the theory of atomic spectroscopy (1), Haigh remarks that "Many introductory textbooks on spectroscopy give satisfactory accounts of Russell-Saunders (LS) coupling, but their treatment of jj coupling is generally very brief." Although we do not wish to dissent from his sentiments on j-j coupling, we wonder whether the treatment of L-S coupling usually offered in introductory texts for term enumeration is not too old-fashioned to still be considered entirely satisfactory. In this article we present an approach to the construction of L-S terms that makes contact with modern group theoretical and tensorial approaches to the theory of atomic spectra and is as easy to present and to comprehend as is the old microstates approach (2, 3). We believe that it is at least as easy to use as the approach of Guofan and Elizey (4) presented in this Journal some ten years ago: in fact, we have been teaching the enumeration of L-S terms for the past ten years using the methods presented in Section 2.