Hooke's atom

Hooke's atom, also known as harmonium or hookium, refers to an artificial helium-like atom where the Coulombic electron-nucleus interaction potential is replaced by a harmonic potential. This system is of significance as it is, for certain values of the force constant defining the harmonic containment, an exactly solvable ground-state many-electron problem that explicitly includes electron correlation. As such it can provide insight into quantum correlation (albeit in the presence of a non-physical nuclear potential) and can act as a test system for judging the accuracy of approximate quantum chemical methods for solving the Schrödinger equation. The name "Hooke's atom" arises because the harmonic potential used to describe the electron-nucleus interaction is a consequence of Hooke's law.