Electronic Structure of Superheavy Atoms . Revisited

D.M. Gitman, A.D. Levin, I.V. Tyutin, and B.L. Voronov Institute of Physics, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil Lebedev Physical Institute, Moscow, Russia The electronic struture of an atom with Z ≤ Zc = 137 can be described by the Dirac equation with the Coulomb field of a point charge Ze. It was believed that the Dirac equation with Z > Zc is inconsistent and physically meaningless because the formula for the lower energy level of the Dirac Hamiltonian formally gives imaginary eigenvalues. But a strict mathematical consideration shows that difficulties with the electronic spectrum for Z > Zc do not arise if the Dirac Hamiltonian is correctly defined as a self-adjoint operator, see [1]. In this article, we briefly summarize the main physical results of that consideration in a form suitable for physicists with some additional new details and numerical calculations of the electronic spectra.