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Radiative Electron Capture Into High- Z Few-Electron Ions: Alignment Of The Excited Ionic States, Andrey S. Surzhykov, Ulrich D. Jentschura, Th H. Stohlker, Stephan Fritzsche

Physics Faculty Research & Creative Works

We lay out a unified formalism for the description of radiative electron capture into excited states of heavy, few-electron ions and their subsequent decay, including a full account of many-electron effects and higher-order multipoles of the radiation field. In particular, the density-matrix theory is applied to explore the magnetic sublevel population of the residual ions, as described in terms of alignment parameters. For the electron capture into the initially hydrogenlike U⁹¹⁺ and lithiumlike U⁸⁹⁺ uranium projectiles, the alignment parameters are calculated, within the multiconfiguration Dirac-Fock approach, as a function of the collision energy and for different ionic states. …