Eur. Phys. J. D 40, 169-173 (2006)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2006-00146-7

Radiative lifetimes of Zr III excited levels

¹ Department of Atomic, Molecular and Nuclear Physics, Univ. Complutense de Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain
² Department of Physics, Lund Institute of Technology, PO Box 118, 221 00 Lund, Sweden
³ Institute of Solid State Physics, 72 Tzarigradsko Chaussee, 1784 Sofia, Bulgaria

Corresponding author: ^a kblagoev@issp.bas.bg

Received: 16 February 2006
Published online: 23 June 2006

Abstract

We report on radiative lifetimes of 4d5p excited states of Zr III produced in a laser produced plasma. The ions were populated either in the ground state or in metastable states, and the number of ions is strongly dependent on the application of an external magnetic field, which is shown to be very important when using the time-resolved laser-induced fluorescence technique for lifetime measurements in highly charged ions. The experimental lifetime results fall in the region 1–2 ns with statistical uncertainties less than 7%. The experimental values were compared with multi-configuration Hartree-Fock calculations showing an agreement within 12–20%. The experimental values are systematically higher than the theoretical ones.