Investigation of autoionizing levels in the Ag I spectrum populated by a combination of discharge and laser excitation

Abstract

Ag I autoionizing levels were populated by a combination of discharge and laser excitation. Twenty-six of the observed lines are assigned to dipole transitions to the Ag I 4d95snl (nl=5p, 6s, 5d, 7s, 6d) configurations. An additional 37 unclassified lines were also observed. Asymmetry parameters q and lifetimes were determined for a number of lines. A combination of ab initio Hartree-Fock calculations, diagonalization of energy matrices and a least-squares fit to the experimental level energies yielded lifetimes in quite good agreement with the experimental values for the above mentioned configurations.