Abstract
The lifetime of the 2 state in He-like niobium () has been precisely determined with a beam-foil time-of-flight technique. The isotope (I=9/2) was chosen in order to minimize cascade effects through hyperfine quenching of the primary feeding state. Further precision was obtained by removing blends with a Doppler-tuned transmission filter. Other cascade contributions were analyzed and found to be negligible. The result is 45.45(16)× sec and respresents increased sensitivity to corrections of O(Zα in the Zα-series expansion for the lifetime by a factor of 5.
- Received 14 September 1993
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.49.3553
©1994 American Physical Society