Statistical properties of inter-series mixing in helium: from integrability to chaos

Phys Rev Lett. 2001 Apr 23;86(17):3747-50. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.86.3747.

Abstract

The photoionization spectrum of helium shows considerable complexity close to the double-ionization threshold. By analyzing the results from both our recent experiments and ab initio three- and one-dimensional calculations, we show that the statistical properties of the spacings between neighboring energy levels clearly display a transition towards quantum chaos.