A CORRELATIVE STUDY OF ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR RYDBERG STATES

Abstract

In order to utilize the well developed Rydberg series behavior for atoms in the vacuum-ultraviolet spectra of molecules, a new approach is devised to treat the Rydberg states of atoms in the same periodic group in a unified way. Then, the same approach is applied to molecules containing elements belonging to the same periodic group with some modification to take the substituent effect into account. For atoms, the ground states can be treated as Rydberg states of sorts. By using the ground state binding energy, or the ionization, potential, as a normalization factor, the differences in the inner-shell structure of atoms in the same column in the periodic table are eliminated. Then, an averaged pattern is revealed for the Rydberg states of these atoms. For molecules containing elements from the same column in the periodic table, the same attitude is applicable providing the optical electron is localized on these elements. Molecules which have delocalized ground state orbitals cannot be related with atomic cases. However, the ionization potential is still capable of normalizing the behavior of the Rydberg states.