Oxygen Metastable X-Ray Emitters

Abstract

A crystal spectrometer is used to study 6.5-MeV, foil-excited oxygen-beam x rays. The transitions from $(1s) (2p) 2 ^{3}P$ to ${(1s)}^{2}1 ^{1}S_{0}$ He-like and from $(1s) (2s) ^{4}P^{\ensuremath{\circ}}$ to ${(1s)}^{2}{(2s)}^{2}{S}_{\frac{1}{2}}$ Li-like oxygen states are observed to have lifetimes of 1.47 \ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{} 0.02 and 1.87 \ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{} 0.1 nsec, respectively. Both decays are observed to have long-lived components. These results are compared to previous lifetime measurements of x-ray emitting and electron-emitting oxygen states.