https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/s10053-022-00510-7
Regular Article - Atomic Physics
Investigation of the atomic structure of curium and determination of its first ionization potential
1
Institut für Physik, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 55099, Mainz, Germany
2
Department Chemie - Standort TRIGA, Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz, 55099, Mainz, Germany
3
Helmholtz-Institut Mainz, 55099, Mainz, Germany
4
GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung GmbH, 64291, Darmstadt, Germany
Received:
29
July
2022
Accepted:
19
September
2022
Published online:
12
October
2022
We report on the investigation of the atomic structure of curium (
) by resonance ionization spectroscopy. Three different excited energy levels were populated from the 
ground state as first excitation steps. Wide-range scans were performed for the search of second excitation steps around the literature value of the ionization potential. These spectra were analyzed to identify Rydberg levels and auto-ionizing resonances. The ionization potential was consistently determined as 48330.68(16)
through the evaluation of Rydberg convergences and the complementary approach of DC electric field ionization by evaluating the ionization threshold according to the saddle point model. The new result deviates by 6.7 from the literature value of 48324(2) by Köhler et al. [15] and is about one order of magnitude more precise.
© The Author(s) 2022
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
