Beam-foil lifetime measurements in Pb III and Pb IV

Abstract

Beam-foil intensity decay curves for transitions in the wavelength range from 900 to 2200 Å are used to derive the lifetimes of the 6s6p1P1 and 3P1 6s6d1D2, 6s7s1S0, and 6p21D2 levels of Pb III, and the 6p2P1/2 and 2P3/2, 6d2D3/2 and 2D5/2, 7s2S1/2, and 5d96s22D3/2 levels of Pb IV, arbitrarily normalized decay curve (ANDC) analyses being used for the 6s6p and 6p levels. In the case of the two 6s6p levels studied in Pb III, good agreement is found with a recent calculation in which a polarization model accounts for valence–core correlation. However, the agreement between the lifetimes observed for the 6p levels in Pb IV and a similar, earlier calculation is only fair.