Effects of a soft-core coulomb potential on the dynamics of a hydrogen atom near a metal surface

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to investigate the effects that the replacement of the Coulomb potential by a soft-core Coulomb potential produces in the classical dynamics of a perturbed Rydberg hydrogen atom. As example, we consider a Rydberg hydrogen atom near a metal surface subjected to a constant electric field in the electron-extraction regime. Thence, the dynamics of the real perturbed Coulomb system, studied by applying the Levi–Civita regularization, is compared with that of the softened one. The results of this study show that the global behavior of the system is significantly altered when the original Coulomb potential part is replaced by a soft-core potential.