A study of the confined hydrogen atom using the finite element method

Abstract

The hydrogen atom confined by an infinite spherical potential barrier is studied employing a variational procedure based on the p-version of the finite element method. In such a procedure, the spherical spatial confinement is imposed straightforwardly by removing a local basis function. The calculations have been performed for estimating the energy spectrum, the dipole polarizability and the effective pressure for various confinement radii. The effect of the spatial confinement on these quantities is analysed. The results obtained are compared with those previously published in the literature and the efficiency of the finite element method to treat confined quantum systems is discussed.