FIZIKA A 10 (2001) 3 , 105-112

THE TWO-PHOTON DECAY OF 1s2s ¹S₀-LIKE STATES IN HEAVY ATOMIC SYSTEMS

PAUL H. MOKLER^a and ROBERT W. DUNFORD^b

^aGSI, Planckstrasse 1, D-64291 Darmstadt, Germany

^bARGONNE National Laboratory, Argonne, IL 60439, U.S.A.

Dedicated to Professor Kseno Ilakovac on the occasion of his 70^th birthday

Received 24 May 2001; Accepted 5 September 2001
Online 30 December 2001

In He-like systems the direct decay of the 1s2s ¹S₀ state to the 1s^{2 1}S₀ ground state is "forbidden". The transition 1s2s ¹S₀� 1s^{2 1}S₀ by two photons sensitively probes the structure of the complete atomic system. In particular, the shape of the two-photon spectrum is sensitive to it and also reveals for heavy atomic numbers details of relativistic effects in strong central fields. A brief survey on this field of research is given with special emphasis on high nuclear charge Z.

PACS numbers: 31.30.Jv, 32.80.Wr
UDC 539.183

Keywords: heavy He-like systems, two-photon decay, 1s2s ¹S₀� 1s^{2 1}S₀ transition, relativistic effects

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