1. Introduction
Barlow et al. [
1] first observed noble gas molecules in the interstellar medium. The other detections of noble gas elements, either in diatomic [
2,
3,
4,
5] or ionic forms [
6] in space at UV and IR spectra, motivate further observations of these species in the universe. It is well known that the atomic and spectroscopic processes are valuable diagnostics for plasma atmosphere in the laboratory or Astronomy. Noble gas atoms are known to be chemically inactive and require high energy to ionize. However, once ionized, their reaction rates are rather fast. Over the years, spectroscopic properties of ionized noble gas atoms have become popular, and observers have started to detect them in space [
7]. On the other hand, alkali-like ions have emerged as the standard test beds for detailed investigation of current relativistic atomic calculations due to their adequately simple but highly correlated electronic structures [
8,
9,
10,
11,
12]. Accurate theoretical and experimental determinations of the transition line parameters and excited-state lifetimes of highly stripped ions are collaborative with the astronomer to investigate dynamics, chemical compositions, opacity, density, and temperature distributions of the distant galaxy [
13], planetary nebulae, and even the entire interstellar medium [
14,
15,
16,
17,
18,
19,
20,
21,
22,
23,
24]. Furthermore, one requires the accurate atomic data of different isotopes of noble gas elements to understand the production of heavy elements in the stellar medium by radiative r- and s-processes [
25,
26]. The data of energy spectra of moderate to high-stripped ions are required for precise astrophysical and laboratory plasma modeling. All these physical facts and figures motivate us to investigate the transition line parameters and lifetimes of septuple ionized astrophysically pertinent inert gases, such as Ar
, Kr
, Xe
, and Rn
.
In the series, Ar
is well studied in the literature. Berry et al. [
27] observed 74 lines of Ar
using the beam-foil technique. In 1982, Striganov and Odintsova [
28] published the observed lines of Ar
through Ar
. The authors of [
29,
30,
31] applied the multi-configuration Dirac–Fock (MCDF) method to calculate the autoionization spectrum, energy levels, transition rates, oscillator strengths, and lifetimes of Ar
. Saloman [
32] identified the energy spectra of Ar
to Ar
, which he studied from the year 2006 to 2009, employing beam foil Spectroscopy (BFS), an electron beam ion trap (EBIT), laser-excited plasmas, fusion devices, astronomical observations, and ab initio calculations with quantum electrodynamic corrections.
Similarly, krypton ion spectra were detected in the interstellar medium [
33,
34], the galactic disc [
35], and the planetary nebulae [
36]. Fine structure intervals, fine structure inversions, and core-polarization study of the Kr
ion were performed by different groups [
37,
38,
39] including third-order many-body perturbation theory and Møller–Pleset perturbation theory [
40,
41] for the energy levels.
It is found that Cu I isoelectronic sequence ions are prominent impurities at high-temperature magnetically confined plasmas [
42], and their emission spectra are observed under the spark sources [
43,
44,
45,
46] of the laser-produced plasma [
47,
48] and in the beam-foil excitations [
49,
50,
51]. The abundance of photospheric lines of trans-iron group elements in the emission spectra of the white dwarfs opens a new way of studying their radiative transfer mechanism [
52]. The presence of the spectral lines of Cu-like ions motivates more accurate determination of atomic data of the radiative properties of these ions for modeling the chemical abundances. These studies are essential for deducing the stellar parameters necessary to investigate the environmental condition of the white dwarfs. There are studies of electronic properties for Xe
using various many-body methods [
53,
54,
55,
56,
57]. Dimitrijevc et al. [
24] identified the importance of Stark broadening at the spectral lines observed in extremely metal-poor halo PNH4-1 in primordial supernova [
58]. However, we study Ar
, Kr
, and Xe
here again to mitigate the lack of all-order many-body calculations or precise experiments and to estimate their spectroscopic properties under a plasma environment. Recently, one of the present authors [
59] studied Xe
exclusively as a single valance system without the plasma screening effect.
Unlike other noble gas ions, studies of radon ions are rare. However, there are a few many-body calculations on Rn
[
60] and Rn
[
61]. The observation of several forbidden lines of Kr and Xe ions in the planetary nebula NGC 7027 was reported recently [
62]. For Rn
, only Migdalek [
63] computed a few energy levels and oscillator strengths of allowed transitions using the Dirac–Fock method corrected by the core-polarisation effect.
The aim of this paper is to estimate (a) energies of the ground and low-lying excited states, (b) the oscillator strengths of electromagnetically allowed transitions, (c) transition probabilities of the forbidden transitions, and (d) lifetimes for a few excited states of Ar
, Kr
, Xe
, and Rn
using the relativistic coupled-cluster (RCC) method [
64,
65,
66]. The accuracies of the RCC calculations are well established by our group for different applications [
67,
68,
69,
70,
71,
72,
73,
74,
75,
76]. The all-order structure of electron correlation in the RCC theory has been elaborated in our earlier paper [
77] and the review article by Bartlett [
78]. Our special effort here is to study the plasma screening effect on the radiative transition parameters. It is obvious that the nuclear attraction to the bound electrons of atoms or ions immersed in plasma is screened by the neighboring ions and the free electrons. The essential feature to note is that the electron correlation of atomic systems in this environment is remarkably different from their corresponding isolated candidate. Therefore, the screening estimations on the transition parameters play a crucial role in the precise diagnostics of plasma temperature and density in the emitting region. In the plasma environment, the ionization potentials decrease gradually with the increasing strength of plasma screening [
79] until they become zero at some critical parameter of plasma. Beyond these critical values of plasma, the states become a continuum state. The corresponding ionization potential beyond which instability occurs is known as ionization potential depression (IPD) according to the Stewart–Pyatt (SP) model [
80]. Accurate determination of the IPD can infer much useful information about the plasma atmosphere, such as providing the proper equation of the state, estimating the radiate opacity of stellar plasma, internal confinement fusion plasma, etc. We have investigated the change in spectroscopic properties of Ar
, Kr
, Xe
, and Rn
in the plasma environment.
2. Theory
Precise generation of wave functions is important for accurately estimating the atomic properties of few-electron monovalent ions presented in this paper. Here, we employ a non-linear version of the well-known RCC theory, a many-body approach which exhaustively pools together correlations. Initially, we solve the Dirac–Coulomb Hamiltonian
H, satisfying the eigenvalue equation
to generate closed-shell atomic wave function under the potential of
electrons where
Here,
and
are the usual Dirac matrices and
is the potential at the site of the
i-th electron due to the atomic nucleus.The rest mass energy of the electron is subtracted from the energy eigenvalues. The last term corresponds to the Coulomb interaction between the
i-th electron and
j-th electron. A single valence reference state for the RCC calculation is generated by adding a single electron in the v-th orbital following Koopman’s theorem [
81]. In RCC formalism, the single valence correlated state
is connected with the single valence reference state
as
The operator
T deals with the excitations from core orbitals and can generate core-excited configurations from closed-shell Dirac–Fock state
. Whereas,
excites at least one electron from the valence orbital, giving rise to valence and core-valence excited configurations [
64]. The operator
can yield the valence and core-valence excited configurations with respect to the open-shell Dirac–Fock state
[
69]. Here, we generate single- and double-excited correlated configurations from Equation (1). The amplitudes of these excitations are solved from the energy eigenvalue equations of the closed-shell and open-shell systems, which are
and
, respectively [
82]. In the present method, these amplitudes are solved following the Jacobi iteration scheme, which is considered all-ordered. The initial guesses of the single- and double-excitation amplitudes are made consistent with the first order of the perturbation theory [
83]. In the present version of RCC theory, we also consider some important triple excitations and hence the abbreviation is used RCCSD(T).
The matrix elements of an arbitrary operator can be written as
The detailed derivations and explanations of the matrix elements associated with electric dipole (
), electric quadrupole (
), and magnetic dipole (
) transitions can be found in the literature [
84]. Emission transition probabilities (s
) for the
,
, and
from
to
state are [
85]
where,
is in cm and
S is the square of the transition matrix elements of
O (corresponding transition operator) in atomic unit of
(
e is the charge of an electron and
is the Bohr radius). The oscillator strength for the
transition is related to the corresponding transition probability (s
) with the following equation [
86]
where
and
are the degeneracies of the final and initial states, respectively. The lifetime of the
k-th state is calculated by considering all transition probabilities to the lower energy states (
i-th) and is given by
In order to incorporate the plasma screening effect on the atomic spectroscopic properties, the Dirac–Coulomb potential takes the form as
Here,
is the effective potential of the nucleus on the
i-th electron due to the presence of the plasma environment. The Debye–Hückle potential is considered to examine the effect of the screening of the nuclear coulomb potential due to the presence of ions and free electrons in plasma [
87,
88]. In the case of a weekly interacting plasma medium, the effective potential experienced by the
i-th electron is given as
The nuclear charge
Z and the Debye screening parameter
are related to the ion density
and plasma temperature
T through the following relation
where,
is the Boltzmann constant. Therefore, a given value of
represents a range of plasma conditions with different ion densities and temperatures.
3. Results and Discussions
The single-particle Dirac–Fock (DF) wavefunctions are the building blocks of the RCC calculations yielding the many-electron correlation energies and correlated wavefunctions. We calculate the bound Dirac–Hartree–Fock orbitals as accurately as possible using a sophisticated numerical approach, GRASP92 [
89]. Further, we apply the basis-set expansion technique [
90] in the self-consistent field approach to obtain the Gaussian-type DF orbital (GTO) used in the RCC calculations. The radial part of each basis function has two parameters,
, and
, as exponents [
91] to be optimized. The parameters are required to optimize due to the finite size of the basis set. The exponent parameters are optimized compared to the DF bound orbitals obtained from GRASP92, discussed in detail in our old papers [
12,
66]. In the basis optimization method, we consider 33, 30, 28, 25, 21, and 20 basis functions for
s,
p,
d,
f,
g, and
h symmetries, respectively. This basis set is considered for all the ions. However, the choice of the active orbitals in the RCC calculation relies on the convergence of the correlation contribution to the closed-shell energy with the increasing number of the orbitals [
66,
92]. Therefore, the active orbitals for the converged correlation contribution to the closed-shell energy are found to be distinct for different ions investigated in this work.
In this article, we calculate the ionization potential of Ar
, Kr
, Xe
, and Rn
using the RCC method and compare them in
Table 1 with the results published in the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) [
93] wherever available. The NIST estimations are considered to have the best accuracy. We find that our calculated ground state energies of Ar
, Kr
, and Xe
are in excellent agreement with NIST results, and deviations are estimated to be
,
, and
, respectively.
Table 1 presents the ionization potential of the low-lying excited states of these ions with average deviations around
,
, and
, respectively. In these cases, the maximum difference is
and occurred for the
state of Ar
,
for
of Kr
, and
for
of Xe
.
Our calculated energies agree well with estimations by Fischer et al. [
31], who computed energy levels of Ar
using the core polarization effect on the Dirac–Hartree–Fock (CP-DHF) theory. Cheng and Kim [
37] tabulated the energy levels of Kr
from the relativistic Hartree–Fock (RHF) calculations. As expected, our RCC calculated results are found to be in better agreement with the NIST values. For Rn
, we have not found any experimental measurement in the literature nor NIST compiled values. Only one theoretical calculation based on the CP-DHF method by [
63] is available with the average deviation of IP being
from our calculations.
The percentage of electron correlation correction, i.e., in IP of the ground state monotonically increases from Ar to Rn with the values , , , and , respectively.
Now, we investigate the impact of the plasma screening potential on the energy levels of the considered ions.
Table 1 shows that IP monotonically decreases with the increase in the
value. The bold values for each ion in the table represent the limiting case beyond which the system becomes unbound.
Figure 1 presents the plasma screening contribution in IP for a few low-lying states, such as ground state
, excited
, and
states of Ar
, Kr
, Xe
, and Ra
ions. The panels of the figure show the plasma screening contribution increases from the ground to higher excited states, as the latter states are less bound by the Coulomb attraction. For Xe
and Rn
, we could plot the effect up to a certain value of
as most of the states become continuum states beyond that. We observe that the plasma screening effect is practically strong for fine structure levels for Ar
and Kr
ions and weak for Xe
, and Ra
ions.
We present the electric dipole matrix elements for the ions in the plasma medium in
Table 2. The table also displays our computed DF values of the matrix elements to reveal the correlation contributions. The separate presentation of the DF and RCC values over the span of the plasma screening parameter,
, in the table is an intentional move. Here, we want to highlight that the plasma screening impacts the DF and the RCC correlation parts differently. In the case of Ar
, the average changes in the matrix element due to the increasing values of the plasma screening parameter are less than 1%. However,
Figure 2 shows significant changes for
and
for finite values of
, especially for
. This is true for any
→
of this ionic series. However, apart from such a few transitions, the plasma effects lie between 1% and 2% for most of the other transitions in the series.
Table 2 shows that the average correlations (for the non-plasma environment) in the transition amplitudes for Ar
, Kr
, Xe
, and Rn
are
,
,
, and
apart from the
→
transition where the correlation is
.
For observational astronomy and laboratory spectroscopy, we present a tabulation of a list of our computed oscillator strengths (
) of
transitions along with their previously reported theoretical and experimental values in
Table 3. Most of the transitions fall in the far and mid-UV regions of the electromagnetic spectrum.
is calculated using the RCC transition amplitudes in length gauge [
94] form presented in
Table 2 and the NIST [
93] wavelengths, wherever available (in the case of Rn
, our computed RCC wavelengths are used). The ratios between the length and velocity gauge amplitudes of our calculated
transitions are also displayed in table to show the accuracy of our RCC wavefunctions, which is close to unity for all the cases, confirming the accuracy of our correlated atomic wavefunctions. However, we find that the ratio is almost two for
→
transitions of Xe
and Rn
. A point to note is that this disagreement is also available in the ratio at the DF level, where we also employed the numerically accurate GRASP92 Code [
89]. One of the reasons for this outcome is due to the strong correlation effect from the d- and f-states, as so in similar alkali systems [
95]. In addition, the consistency of the accuracy of our calculations can be drawn from the approximate consistency of the ratios 3:2:1 among the transition matrix estimations of
:
:
[
96].
The
Oscillator strengths for Ar
are well studied in the literature [
31,
97,
98,
99,
100,
101,
102,
103,
104,
105], and they are in good agreement with our estimations based on the correlation exhaustive RCC method.
Table 3 shows that the same is true for Kr
. For Ar
, our calculations for
are almost as accurate as those found from other sophisticated theoretical approaches, such as the relativistic many-body perturbation theory [
102], and for the most latest theoretical results employing the multiconfigurational Dirac–Hartree–Fock approximation [
31]. To the best of our knowledge, in the case of Kr
, we could not find any correlation-exhaustive many-body result of
transition. There have been experiments, mostly using beam-foil experiments, on the
transition from the ground state to the first excited states of Ar
[
97], and Kr
[
49,
50,
51,
106,
107]. Our estimations are well within the uncertainty limit of the latest experiments. We also see that some of the old calculations either underestimate or overestimate the oscillator strength values due to non-appropriate considerations of correlations and relativistic effects.
Table 3.
Our RCC oscillator strengths of electric dipole transitions. We compare our results with other estimations available in the recent literature (experimental endeavors are highlighted with “exp” subscript). Our results (“RCC”) are obtained using the RCC calculations, except NIST wavelengths are used for wherever available. Transition states are designated with the outermost orbital followed by of the state. Values at the parenthesis in the second column are ratios between length- and velocity-gauged dipole matrix elements.
Table 3.
Our RCC oscillator strengths of electric dipole transitions. We compare our results with other estimations available in the recent literature (experimental endeavors are highlighted with “exp” subscript). Our results (“RCC”) are obtained using the RCC calculations, except NIST wavelengths are used for wherever available. Transition states are designated with the outermost orbital followed by of the state. Values at the parenthesis in the second column are ratios between length- and velocity-gauged dipole matrix elements.
| | | | | |
---|
Transition | | Other | | | | |
Ar | | | | | | |
3s2 → 3p2 | 0.1857 (0.99) | , , | 0.1859 | 0.1875 | 0.1878 | 0.1887 |
| | , , , | | | | |
| | , , | | | | |
3s2 → 3p4 | 0.3795 (0.99) | , , , | 0.3804 | 0.3837 | 0.3840 | 0.3854 |
| | , , , | | | | |
| | , | | | | |
3s2 → 4p2 | 0.0418 (1.00) | , , , | 0.0416 | 0.0462 | 0.0445 | 0.0432 |
| | , , | | | | |
3s2 → 4p4 | 0.0803 (1.00) | , , , | 0.0793 | 0.0877 | 0.0859 | 0.0838 |
| | , , | | | | |
3s2 → 5p2 | 0.0143 (0.98) | | 0.0141 | 0.0123 | 0.0149 | 0.0121 |
3s2 → 5p4 | 0.0271 (1.00) | , | 0.0270 | 0.0184 | 0.0291 | 0.0278 |
4s2 → 4p2 | 0.2810 (1.01) | , | 0.2829 | 0.2871 | 0.2816 | 0.2777 |
4s2 → 4p4 | 0.5736 (1.01) | , | 0.5782 | 0.5883 | 0.5748 | 0.5645 |
3p2 → 4s2 | 0.0880 (1.00) | , | 0.0879 | 0.0765 | 0.0763 | 0.0760 |
3p4 → 4s2 | 0.0900 (1.01) | , | 0.0899 | 0.0780 | 0.0783 | 0.0783 |
3p2 → 5s2 | 0.0163 (1.01) | | 0.0163 | 0.0162 | 0.0128 | 0.0154 |
3p4 → 5s2 | 0.0166 (1.01) | | 0.0166 | 0.0202 | 0.0133 | 0.0130 |
3p2 → 3d4 | 0.5074 (0.96) | , , | 0.5091 | 0.5107 | 0.5115 | 0.5180 |
| | , | | | | |
3p4 → 3d4 | 0.0502 (0.96) | , , | 0.0503 | 0.0505 | 0.0505 | 0.0512 |
| | , | | | | |
3p4 → 3d6 | 0.4556 (0.96) | , , | 0.4534 | 0.4542 | 0.4549 | 0.4571 |
| | , | | | | |
3p2 → 4d4 | 0.1326 (1.05) | , | 0.1312 | 0.1291 | 0.1275 | 0.1024 |
3p4 → 4d4 | 0.0137 (1.03) | , | 0.0135 | 0.0131 | 0.0132 | 0.0109 |
3p4 → 4d6 | 0.1226 (1.03) | , | 0.1214 | 0.1180 | 0.1187 | 0.1159 |
4p2 → 4d4 | 0.8067 (0.95) | | 0.8070 | 0.8020 | 0.7930 | 0.8035 |
4p4 → 4d4 | 0.0798 (0.98) | | 0.0797 | 0.0798 | 0.0786 | 0.0787 |
4p4 → 4d6 | 0.7192 (0.98) | | 0.7185 | 0.7215 | 0.7079 | 0.7009 |
3d4 → 4p2 | 0.0663 (0.98) | , | 0.0663 | 0.0695 | 0.0630 | 0.0678 |
3d4 → 4p4 | 0.0130 (1.00) | , | 0.0130 | 0.0133 | 0.0124 | 0.0134 |
3d6 → 4p4 | 0.0784 (0.97) | , | 0.0784 | 0.0762 | 0.0747 | 0.0720 |
3d4 → 4f6 | 0.8812 (1.00) | | 0.8777 | 0.8702 | 0.8584 | 0.8762 |
3d6 → 4f6 | 0.0424 (1.00) | | 0.0418 | 0.0415 | 0.0409 | 0.0401 |
3d6 → 4f8 | 0.8397 (1.00) | | 0.8364 | 0.8297 | 0.8149 | 0.7796 |
Kr | | | | | | |
4s2 ⟶ 4p2 | 0.2543 (1.00) | , , , | 0.2633 | 0.2718 | 0.2705 | 0.2673 |
| | , , , | | | | |
| | , , | | | | |
4s2 ⟶ 4p4 | 0.5466 (0.97) | 0.53, 0.47, , | 0.5661 | 0.5825 | 0.5833 | 0.5829 |
| | , , 0.59 , | | | | |
| | , ,
| | | | |
4s2 ⟶ 5p2 | 0.0227 (1.01) | | 0.0206 | 0.0191 | | |
4s2 ⟶ 5p4 | 0.0354 (1.00) | | 0.0313 | 0.0275 | | |
4p2 → 5s2 | 0.1281 (1.02) | | 0.1261 | 0.1187 | | |
4p4 → 5s2 | 0.1392 (1.02) | | 0.1351 | 0.1302 | | |
4p2 → 4d4 | 0.9888 (1.00) | | 1.0562 | 1.0583 | 1.1068 | |
4p4 → 4d4 | 0.0972 (1.00) | | 0.0998 | 0.1015 | 0.1045 | |
4p4 → 4d6 | 0.8796 (1.00) | | 0.9051 | 0.9200 | 0.9480 | |
4p2 → 6s2 | 0.0237 (1.06) | | 0.0227 | 0.0181 | | |
4p4 → 6s2 | 0.0253 (1.07) | | 0.0243 | 0.0197 | | |
4d4 → 4f6 | 1.0811 (0.98) | | 1.0876 | 1.0890 | | |
4d6 → 4f6 | 0.0514 (0.98) | | 0.0508 | 0.0509 | | |
4d6 → 4f8 | 1.0277 (0.98) | | 1.0326 | 1.0340 | | |
4d4 → 5p2 | 0.1828 (1.00) | | 0.1781 | 0.1697 | | |
4d4 → 5p4 | 0.0352 (1.03) | | 0.0345 | 0.0329 | | |
4d6 → 5p4 | 0.2135 (1.00) | | 0.2078 | 0.1984 | | |
4d4 → 5f6 | 0.0001 (1.09) | | 0.0005 | | | |
4f6 → 5d4 | 0.1647 (0.98) | | 0.1582 | 0.1485 | | |
4f6 → 5d6 | 0.0117 (0.98) | | 0.0113 | 0.0106 | | |
4f8 → 5d6 | 0.1759 (0.98) | | 0.1689 | 0.1582 | | |
4f6 → 5g8 | 1.2447 (1.00) | | 1.2185 | | | |
4f8 → 5g8 | 0.0346 (1.00) | | 0.0339 | | | |
4f8 → 5g10 | 1.2103 (1.00) | | 1.1841 | | | |
5p2 → 5d4 | 1.4023 (1.00) | | 1.3825 | 1.3467 | | |
5p4 → 5d4 | 0.1393 (1.01) | | 0.1369 | 0.1335 | | |
5p4 → 5d6 | 1.2582 (1.01) | | 1.2391 | 1.2062 | | |
4d6 → 5f6 | 0.00002 (0.28) | | 0.00001 | | | |
4d6 → 5f8 | 0.0003 (0.29) | | 0.0003 | | | |
5p2 → 6s2 | 0.2322 (1.07) | | 0.2229 | | | |
5p4 → 6s2 | 0.2529 (1.08) | | 0.2422 | | | |
Xe | | | | | | |
5s2 → 5p2 | 0.2436 (1.01) | , , | 0.2471 | 0.2482 | | |
| | , , | | | | |
| | , , | | | | |
5s2 → 5p4 | 0.5724 (1.01) | , , | 0.5801 | 0.5816 | | |
| | , , , | | | | |
| | , , | | | | |
5p2 →5d4 | 1.0195 (1.02) | , , | 1.0204 | | | |
| | , , | | | | |
| | | | | | |
5p4 →5d4 | 0.0992 (1.02) | , , | 0.0993 | | | |
| | , , | | | | |
5p4 →5d6 | 0.9064 (1.02) | , , | 0.9066 | | | |
| | , , | | | | |
| | | | | | |
5p2 → 6s2 | 0.1539 (1.05) | , , | 0.1539 | | | |
| | , | | | | |
5p4 → 6s2 | 0.1816 (1.05) | , , | 0.1817 | | | |
| | , | | | | |
4f6 → 5d4 | 0.0577 (2.35) | , , | 0.0560 | | | |
4f6 → 5d6 | 0.0043 (2.12) | | 0.0042 | | | |
4f8 → 5d6 | 0.0651 (2.19) | , , | 0.0633 | | | |
4f6 → 5g8 | 0.3890 (1.02) | , | | | | |
4f8 → 5g8 | 0.0109 (1.02) | | | | | |
4f8 → 5g10 | 0.3826 (1.02) | , | | | | |
5d4 → 5f6 | 1.1437 (1.04) | | 1.1259 | | | |
5d6 → 5f6 | 0.0550 (1.04) | | 0.0813 | | | |
5d6 → 5f8 | 1.0981 (1.04) | | 1.0812 | | | |
5f6 → 5g8 | 1.0583 (0.99) | | | | | |
5f8 → 5g8 | 0.0293 (0.99) | | | | | |
5f8 → 5g10 | 1.0246 (0.99) | | | | | |
6s2 → 6p2 | 0.4778 (1.13) | | 0.4921 | | | |
6s2 → 6p4 | 1.0555 (1.13) | | 1.1260 | | | |
6p2 → 6d4 | 1.6248 (1.11) | | 1.5953 | | | |
6p4 → 6d6 | 1.4527 (1.11) | | 1.4249 | | | |
6p4 → 6d4 | 0.1601 (1.11) | | 0.1566 | | | |
Rn | | | | | | |
6s2 → 6p2 | 0.2372 (1.00) | | 0.2379 | | | |
6s2 → 6p4 | 0.6880 (1.02) | | 0.6922 | | | |
6p2 → 7s2 | 0.1634 (1.06) | | | | | |
6p4 → 7s2 | 0.2472 (1.07) | | | | | |
6p2 →6d4 | 1.0154 (1.01) | | 1.0113 | | | |
6p4 →6d4 | 0.1001 (1.01) | | 0.0999 | | | |
6p4 →6d6 | 0.9234 (1.01) | | 0.9170 | | | |
5f6 → 6d4 | 0.0660 (2.13) | | 0.0578 | | | |
5f8 → 6d6 | 0.0842 (1.83) | | 0.0755 | | | |
5f6 → 6d6 | 0.0057 (1.73) | | 0.0051 | | | |
5f6 → 5g8 | 0.6982 (1.00) | | | | | |
7s2 → 7p2 | 0.4182 (1.11) | | | | | |
7s2 → 7p4 | 1.1727 (1.12) | | | | | |
6d4 → 7p2 | 0.2940 (1.05) | | | | | |
6d4 → 7p4 | 0.0513 (1.04) | | | | | |
6d6 → 7p4 | 0.3207 (1.05) | | | | | |
Over the last two decades, a few of the low-lying
transitions of Xe
are estimated using core-polarization or model potential as an effective means of correlation calculations, apart from third-order perturbation calculations [
55]. It is known that our RCC method is an all-order extension of many-body perturbation theory [
83]. Further, it includes most of the correlation features, including core correlation, pair correlation, and higher order correlation effects [
69] for a given level of excitation. For Rn
, we find only one theoretical endeavor [
63] using the model potential. The presence of
d- and
f-orbitals for Xe
and Rn
ions in the core makes these two ions highly correlated. Because of the large atomic number and highly stripped configurations, we expect a strong relativistic effect in their spectroscopy. Therefore, it is necessary to do relativistic ab initio correlation exhaustive calculations for them and our computations exactly mitigate that requirement. In
Table 3, we also present the effect of the plasma atmosphere on the oscillator strengths for observational and laboratory spectroscopy. The oscillator strengths for
are calculated using the
matrix elements presented in
Table 2 and the corresponding transition wavelengths computed from RCC theory. The table exhibits the significant effects of plasma screening parameters on the oscillator strengths.
Table 4 and
Table 5 present transition probabilities for the relatively strong forbidden transitions governed by the electric quadruple (
) and the magnetic dipole (
) moments. Similar to oscillator strength in
Table 3, here we use NIST wavelengths for the transition probability wherever available. For Rn
, we use the RCC calculated transition wavelengths. We do not find any estimation of the forbidden transitions in the literature of this ionic series which fall either in the ultraviolet or in the near infra-red regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Transitions falling in the ultraviolet region are significant in astronomical observation and plasma research [
113,
114,
115,
116]. In comparison, the infra-red transitions have applications in astronomy using space-based telescopes ([
117]). Moreover, infrared spectroscopy provides major information about cool astronomical regions in space, such as interstellar medium [
118] and planetary nebulae [
119]. It is found that
→
of Kr
and
→
of Xe
emit orange and green lights, respectively, which can be used in laser spectroscopy [
120,
121,
122,
123,
124].
It is found from
Table 5 that the
transition probability is stronger among fine-structure levels than the
transition.
Table 4 reveals that the maximum
transition probability,
, occurs for the transition
→
of Ar
,
→
of Kr
,
→
of Xe
and
→
of Rn
, and they have values of 0.17949, 8.4000, 158.33 and 1137.7, respectively. Moreover, our estimations of
transition probability for the
→
transition of Xe
has excellent agreement with the calculations using the multi-configuration Dirac–Hartree–Fock method [
125,
126].
Table 6 presents the lifetime of the low-lying states of this series. We compare our results with other experimental and theoretical estimations wherever available and find good agreement with the recent endeavors. We provide lifetimes of many excited states calculated for the first time in the literature to our knowledge.
Table 5.
Magnetic dipole transition rate (in s) in plasma screened and unscreened medium. Note: the notation in the case of transition rates means . For (Xe), transition rates 1.9227 (−03) and 1.9277 (−03) are available in the literature (a) using the multiconfiguration Dirac–Fock method without and with Breit interaction plus the quantum electrodynamics effect, respectively.
Table 5.
Magnetic dipole transition rate (in s) in plasma screened and unscreened medium. Note: the notation in the case of transition rates means . For (Xe), transition rates 1.9227 (−03) and 1.9277 (−03) are available in the literature (a) using the multiconfiguration Dirac–Fock method without and with Breit interaction plus the quantum electrodynamics effect, respectively.
Transitions | | | | | |
---|
Ar | | | | | |
3p2 → 3p4 | 1.7951 (−01) | 1.9857 (−01) | 1.9603 (−01) | 1.9165 (−01) | 1.8570 (−01) |
3p4 → 4f6 | 3.7845 (−02) | 3.7248 (−02) | 3.5575 (−02) | 3.2958 (−02) | 2.9561 (−02) |
3d6 → 5g8 | 1.0634 (−02) | 1.0124 (−02) | 8.8719 (−03) | 7.0637 (−03) | |
Kr | | | | | |
4s2→ 4d4 | 9.0675 (−03) | 7.2173 (−03) | 8.2040 (−03) | 6.7390 (−03) | |
4p2 → 4p4 | 8.4015 (00) | 8.2789 (00) | 7.9664 (00) | 7.4776 (00) | 6.8397 (00) |
4d4 → 4d6 | 2.5436 (−02) | 3.2234 (−02) | 3.0177 (−02) | 2.7000 (−02) | |
5p2 → 5p4 | 4.7841 (−01) | 5.3517 (−01) | 4.6911 (−01) | | |
5d4 → 5d6 | 1.7080 (−03) | 1.0904 (−03) | 2.2682 (−03) | | |
Xe | | | | | |
5p2 → 5p4 | 5.7437 (+01) | 5.7875 (+01) | 5.3500 (+01) | | |
5p4 → 5f6 | 6.3588 (−03) | 5.7557 (−03) | | | |
4f6 → 5f6 | 5.0459 (+01) | 4.9605 (+01) | | | |
4f6 → 5f8 | 4.9212 (−01) | 5.3389 (−01) | | | |
4f8 → 5f6 | 1.1142 (+01) | 1.0620 (+01) | | | |
4f8 → 5f8 | 1.5833 (+02) | 1.5517 (+02) | | | |
5d4 → 5d6 | 2.7070 (−01) | 2.6538 (−01) | 2.2900 (−01) | | |
Rn | | | | | |
6p2 → 6p4 | 1.2442 (+03) | 1.2212 (+03) | | | |
6d4 → 6d6 | 4.5873 (00) | 4.1847 (00) | | | |
5f6 → 5f8 | 6.6129 (−02) | 3.4422 (−02) | | | |
6s2 → 7s2 | 1.0113 (00) | | | | |
7p2 → 7p4 | 8.1938 (+01) | | | | |
6p2 → 7p2 | 7.2065 (−02) | | | | |
6p4 → 7p4 | 2.4557 (00) | | | | |
5f6 → 7p4 | 2.4281 (−03) | | | | |
The comparisons of our computed results with the other estimations obtained from correlation exhaustive ab initio theoretical computations or precise experiments are one of the measures of accuracy of our calculations. Further, the differences between the calculated matrix elements in the length and velocity gauge forms are characteristic of the preciseness of our calculations. A recent piece of literature [
95] also claims that the difference in length gauge and velocity gauge is a measure of accuracy. Another factor of accuracy in ab initio calculations arises from the DF wavefunctions used for correlation calculations. In addition, we should consider the uncertainty that arises from the other correlation terms (which we did not consider in this article) and the quantum electrodynamics effect, which is at most
in total. Taking all these into account, the maximum calculated uncertainties for Ar
, Kr
, Xe
, and Rn
are about
,
,
and
, respectively.
To understand the critical effect of the plasma atmosphere on the ionization potential of the ions, we highlight the IPD values in bold fonts in
Table 1 for different values of screening length,
. These IPD values reflect critical electron or plasma density at a particular temperature for the ionic system when a few of the bound ionic states are elevated to continuum states.
Table 1 also reveals that the fine structure splittings (FSS) are suppressed as the screening strength increases from
= 0 to 1.0. For example, the energy differences between
and
of Kr
are evaluated as 9774 a.u, 9732 a.u, 9608 a.u., and 9407 a.u. for
= 0, 0.025, 0.05, and 0.075 a.u., respectively. This phenomenon is consistent with earlier calculations for sodium D line [
127] and hydrogen-like atoms [
128]. The suppression of the transition rate among the fine-structure levels is mainly arising from the energy quench.
From
Figure 3, we pictorially estimate the critical values of plasma screening strength (
) where the ionization potential becomes zero for a particular atomic state. We also tabulate these values in
Table 7. The critical screening strength is essential in photo-ionization cross-section, which increases with increasing
until
. This increment is obvious due to the decrease in bound state energy leading to the increase in radial expansion of the bound state wavefunction [
128]. This phase shift of bound state to continuum state is induced by the plasma atmosphere, and the ionization threshold decreases with the Debye screening length (
). In terms of the photo-ionization cross-section [
129], the plasma decreases the threshold cross-section, and the discrete bound wavefunctions become diffused. Therefore, critical screening strength plays an important role in atomic structure. However, we have not found any spectroscopic data in the literature for these ions in plasma medium to compare with our results.
Table 6.
Lifetimes in ns of few low-lying states.
Table 6.
Lifetimes in ns of few low-lying states.
Level | Present Work | Other Work (Experiment) | Other Work (Theory) |
---|
Ar | | | |
3p2 | 0.411 | 0.417
, 0.423 , | , , , |
| | 0.48, 0.49 | , , |
| | 0.55, 0.53 | |
3p4 | 0.387 | 0.389, 0.421, | , , , |
| | 0.428, 0.48 | , , |
| | 0.54, 0.527 | |
3d4 | 0.132 | 0.170
, 0.130 , | , , , |
| | 0.158, | |
3d6 | 0.137 | 0.166
, 0.131 , | , , |
| | 0.160 | |
4f6 | 0.003 | | |
4f8 | 0.002 | | |
Kr | | | |
4p2 | 0.293 | 0.41
, | , |
| | , | |
4p4 | 0.235 | 0.33, | , |
| | , | |
4d4 | 0.048 | | |
4d6 | 0.052 | | |
4f6 | 0.055 | | |
4f8 | 0.055 | | |
Xe | | | |
5p2 | 0.45 | ,
0.50 , | , , , |
| | | |
5p4 | 0.29 | , 0.33, | , , , |
| | | |
5d4 | 0.08 | | , , |
5d6 | 0.08 | | , , |
Rn | | | |
6p2 | 0.429 | | |
6p4 | 0.144 | | |
6d4 | 0.056 | | |
6d6 | 0.082 | | |