Endohedrally confined helium: Study of mirror collapses

The properties of a helium atom confined inside an endohedral cavity, such as a fullerene, are studied. The fullerene cavity is modeled by a potential well and the strength of this potential is varied in order to understand the collapse of different atomic wave functions into the fullerene cage. Three theoretical calculation methods have been developed: a relaxation method, a Sturmian basis method, and a variational method. The first two methods are nonperturbative. The three methods allow inclusion of full correlations among the two electrons. Results showing mirror collapse effects are presented for an S-wave model, in which all the angular quantum numbers are set to zero.