Re: Atomic orbital structure

Arnold Neumaier wrote:
Igor Khavkine wrote:

The plots of electron clouds that are usually shown in textbooks for
different Hydrogen orbitals are obtained theoretically. However, I'm
sure that they have been verified experimentally.

The grey values of a typical fuzzy orbital picture are the squared
absolute values of a set of mutually orthogonal basis vectors;
and the boundary of a typical sharp orbital picture is the set of
points where the squared absolute values of the same basis vectors
attain some reasonable threshold value.

The electrons are not usually in one of these states,
but in some superposition of them. I don't think it is possible to
measure the charge distribution of a single hydrogen atom in an
excited state. The measurement interferes too much with the state
to do so.

I did some checking and some more thinking on this issue, and I think
you're right. I have to retract my statement of certainty. It would
indeed be very hard to measure the charge distribution of any state
very far from the ground state. Only indirect checks would be possible.

These would include scattering cross sections, various multipole
moments, polarizability coefficients, etc. All of these properties
should be well tested for the Hydrogenic ground state, but likely less
and less so for higher energy levels of the atom.

Igor

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