Measurement of radiative lifetimes in Pr II and Nd II

Abstract

We have measured the radiative lifetimes of 33 levels of Pr II and 13 levels of Nd II using two variants of the beam-laser method. The levels studied had term energies up to ~30 000 cm–1 and lifetimes in the range 6–170 ns. Experimental accuracy was in the range 1–11%. We have used these lifetimes to update transition probabilities for 82 transitions in Pr II in the wavelength range 392–640 nm, which are useful for stellar abundance determinations. PACS Nos.: 32.70Cs, 95.30Ky