Spectroscopy of Hydrogen, Helium, Neon and Mercury Low-Pressure Discharge and a Barcode-like Periodic Table Based on Energy Levels

Abstract

Strong spectral lines in the visible range are obtained from luminescence generated by low-pressure gas discharge tubes of hydrogen, neon, helium, and mercury. Although the spectrum of neon is complicated at first glance, the energy levels are degenerate and clustered; this means that the level statistics differ from the Wigner surmise, which is closely related to level repulsion and quantum chaos. We present a visualization of the lower 99 energy levels of each atom in a barcode-like periodic table.