Relativistic and many-body effects on total binding energies of cesium ions

Abstract

Total binding energies of several charge states of cesium, including all rare-gas configurations, are calculated in the framework of relativistic many-body perturbation theory and the multiconfiguration Dirac-Fock method. We do a detailed comparison of the correlations obtained by these two methods, from which we can obtain information on the accuracy of the predictions. We thus provide benchmark calculations to assess how accurately atomic masses can be deduced from highly charged ions, for both present and future Penning-trap experiments. One-electron radiative corrections are included and the screening of the self-energy is evaluated using the Welton approximation.