Lifetime measurements for low-lying levels in Hg I and Hg II using the beam-foil technique

Abstract

The techniques of beam-foil spectroscopy are applied to obtain measurements of the lifetimes of the 6s6p1P1, 3P1, 6s6d1D2, 3D1, 3D2, and 3D3 levels of Hg I and the 6p2P1/2, 2P3/2, 6d2D3/2, 2D5/2, and 7s2S1/2 levels of Hg II. The energy loss sustained by the ions in passing through the carbon foil is determined using an extended Doppler-shift technique. Constrained curve-fitting and arbitrarily normalized decay curve analyses are used to overcome problems caused by blending between transitions from the 6s6d1D2 and 3D1 levels of Hg I. The f values obtained from the resonance transitions are 1.14 ± 0.04 (Hg I) and 0.648 ± 0.022 (Hg II), in agreement with the trends found previously for higher Z ions in the Hg I and Au I isoelectronic sequences.