Differential geometry of atomic structure and the binding energy of atoms

Abstract

The geometric theory of partial differential equations due to E. Cartan is applied to atomic systems in order to solve the many-body problems and to obtain the binding energies of electrons in an atom. The procedure consists in defining a Schrödinger equation over an Euclidean patch which overlaps with other Euclidean patches in a specified way to form a manifold. If the energy of the system has to be a minimum, it is shown using the Dirichlet principle that the coordinate systems are related by the Cauchy-Riemann relations. The invariance of the Schrödinger equations in the overlapping region leads to a nonlinear second-order equation which is invariant to automorphic transformations and whose solutions are doubly periodic functions. There are only two possible single-valued solutions to this nonlinear partial differential equation and these correspond to lattices of points in the complex space, which are (a) corners of an array of equilateral triangles, and (b) corners of an array of isosceles right-angled triangles. The first solution was used in an earlier work to derive many static properties of nuclei. In this paper it is shown that the second solution gives binding energies of atoms in agreement of about 3% for the few experimental points that are available and also in good agreement with the binding energies of atoms obtained by the perturbation theory. It is also shown that this lattice under certain approximations is equivalent to a pure Coulomb law and the Bohr orbits of the hydrogen atom are correctly predicted. In obtaining the binding energies of atoms, no free parameters are required in the theory, except for the value of the binding energy of the He atom, as the theory is developed only for spinless systems. All other constants turn out to be fundamental constants.