Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Simplify your life

Nature Physics volume 16, page 1242 (2020)Cite this article

Subjects

Within the Hartree atomic unit systems, the Schrödinger equation becomes parameter free. But there’s more to it than making a student’s life easier, as Gordon Drake and Eite Tiesinga recount.

In the earliest days of quantum mechanics, these same problems must have plagued Douglas Hartree (pictured) as he struggled with the complexities of solving the Schrödinger equation for many-electron atoms and molecules. This brought Hartree face to face with the many-body problem in quantum mechanics. Just as in the classical equivalent, the equations of motion for an atom with two or more electrons cannot be solved exactly, and so approximations must be used. Hartree’s idea was to assume that each electron moves in the average field produced by all the others. The resulting equations are now known as the Hartree equations, and, if the indistinguishability of the electrons is taken into account, the Hartree–Fock equations after the Russian physicist Vladimir Aleksandrovich Fock. Today, these equations and their extensions are widely used throughout the atomic physics and quantum chemistry communities to predict properties of atoms and molecules.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Get just this article for as long as you need it

$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

References

  1. Hartree, D. R. Math. Proc. Camb. Phil. Soc. 24, 89110 (1928).

    Google Scholar 

  2. Tiesinga, E., Mohr, P. J., Newell, D. B. & Taylor, B. N. Values of fundamental physical constants. NIST https://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Constants/index.html (2019).

  3. Pohl, R. et al. Nature 466, 213–216 (2010).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  4. Bezginov, N. et al. Science 365, 1007–1012 (2019).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  5. Yerokhin, V. A., Pachucki, K. & Patkóš, V. Ann. Phys. 531, 1800324 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario, Canada

    Gordon W. F. Drake

  2. Joint Quantum Institute, National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Maryland, Gaithersburg, MD, USA

    Eite Tiesinga

Authors
  1. Gordon W. F. Drake
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Eite Tiesinga
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Gordon W. F. Drake or Eite Tiesinga.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Drake, G.W.F., Tiesinga, E. Simplify your life. Nat. Phys. 16, 1242 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-020-01095-x

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-020-01095-x

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing