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First Measurement of Lyman Alpha X-ray Lines in Hydrogen-like Vanadium

Published

Author(s)

John D. Gillaspy, C T. Chantler, D Paterson, Lawrence T. Hudson, F Serpa, E Takacs

Abstract

The first measurement of hydrogen-like vanadium x-ray Lyman alpha transitions has been made. The measurement was made on an absolute scale, fully independent of atomic structure calculations. Sufficient signal was obtained to reduce the statistical uncertainty to a small fraction of the total error budget. Potential sources of systematic error due to Doppler shifts were eliminated by performing the measurement on trapped ions. The energies for Ly alpha1 and Ly alpha2 are 5443.95(25) eV, and 5431.10(25) eV, respectively. These results are within approximately 1.5 sigma of the theoretical values 5443.63 eV and 5430.70 eV of Johnson and Soff (1985). The results are discussed in terms of their relation to the Lamb shift and the development of an x-ray wavelength standard based on a compact source of trapped highly charged ions.
Citation
Journal of Physics B-Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics

Keywords

Hydrogen, Hydrogen-like ions, quantum electrodynamics (QED), Lamb shift, Lyman alpha, electron beam ion trap

Citation

Gillaspy, J. , Chantler, C. , Paterson, D. , Hudson, L. , Serpa, F. and Takacs, E. (2009), First Measurement of Lyman Alpha X-ray Lines in Hydrogen-like Vanadium, Journal of Physics B-Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics (Accessed March 28, 2024)
Created September 30, 2009, Updated December 12, 2019