Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-atomic-and-laser-physics-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2021/1/d/solution
Past exam of the atomic and laser physics course of the University of Oxford 2021 1 d Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-25
Neglect hyperfine structure, spin-orbit coupling and the diamagnetic term, and set , . The Zeeman energy is . The electron spin is free, so every spatial result below is duplicated with an added .
For a magnetic field parallel to , the old magnetic quantum number remains good and the first-order energy levels areThe two orbitals have zero orbital angular momentum, so only their electron spin contributes at this order.
For a magnetic field parallel to , the expectation of in each individual orbital vanishes. One must still check the degenerate subspace: its projected is zero as well. Thus there is no first-order orbital splitting in a sufficiently weak transverse magnetic field. Spin still contributes .
The transverse orbital Zeeman mixing can be seen without assuming its size. Put , , and . In the real orbital basis, is unaffected while have off-diagonal matrix elements of modulus . Diagonalizing this two-dimensional Hamiltonian gives the spatial energy eigenvaluesWhen , their shifts relative to the earlier levels are , with added for electron spin. The displayed square-root expression also handles comparable to , provided coupling to other principal shells stays negligible. The orbital retains zero orbital correction.
These quadratic orbital estimates keep the enhanced contribution from mixing the split levels. Minimal magnetic minimal coupling also produces ; its expectation value is positive and must be added for a full order- calculation. For example it gives for . It is parametrically smaller than the mixing term when .
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