Abstract The intention of this paper is to determine some of the properties of the screened coulomb [sic] potential, and look into its validity as a model for observed emission spectra of hydrogen plasmas. Some variational methods will be examined and the problem of finding upper bounds to the excited states of atoms will also be investigated. The variational method is then applied to the anomoly [sic] of the...

Introduction Section II of this thesis considers the problem of an electron which is both bound in an attractive screened Coulomb potential and under the simultaneous influence of an external electric field. The total energy Hamiltonian, for the case of one electron immersed in a plasma, is derived. A suitable ground state wavefunction is chosen which incorporates the approximate induced dipole character of the charge configuration when subjected to the plasma's free particle uniform electric field....