On Thu, Oct 29, 2015 at 11:11 PM, Bob Higgins <[email protected]> wrote:
In Rydberg matter the electron is in a very large circular orbit (and by > circular, I mean that the orbital is planar). > My understanding is that the proposed clusters of varying sizes with sixfold symmetry rotate in a plane. Unless Holmlid is proposing Rydberg excitation that is fundamentally different than that seen elsewhere, the orbitals of the electrons are those of the usual spherical harmonics (e.g., an s- or p-orbitals), but with large angular momentum, which leads them to be deformed and susceptible to magnetic fields. Here are orbitals deformed under successive units of orbital angular momentum; the specific shapes of the orbitals are not represented: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/75/Sommerfeld_ellipses.svg/2000px-Sommerfeld_ellipses.svg.png I believe these orbitals are understood to have the normal 3-dimensional probability distributions. The image suggests that additional units of angular momentum in all orbital types increasingly expose the charge in the nucleus, leading to something like an ion. (Somewhere I got the impression that the the Rydberg matter is presumed to form ionic bonds.) Eric
