Long-Range Interactions for Hydrogen: 6P–1S and 6P–2S Systems

The collisional shift of a transition constitutes an important systematic effect in highprecision spectroscopy. Accurate values for van der Waals interaction coefficients are required in order to evaluate the distance-dependent frequency shift. We here consider the interaction of excited hydrogen 6P atoms with metastable atoms (in the 2S state), in order to explore the influence of quasi-degenerate 2P and 6S states on the dipole-dipole interaction. The motivation for the calculation is given by planned high-precision measurements of the transition. Due to the presence of quasi-degenerate levels, one can use the non-retarded approximation for the interaction terms over wide distance ranges.