Alignment of atomic inner-shells following alpha-decay-induced ionization

S R Mcconnell (1, 2) , a N Artemyev (1, 2) , A Surzhykov (1, 2)

1 Physikalisches Institut [Heidelberg]
2 GSI - Helmholtz zentrum für Schwerionenforschung GmbH

Nuclear alpha decay may induce the emission of electrons originally bound to the nucleus. If the ejected electron initially resides in a state with j > 1/2, the residual ion may be aligned. In this article, such an alignment is examined for the L III ionisation of heavy atoms. This work pays particular attention to the effects of shake-off, recoil and nuclear potential screening. To illustrate these effects, we have performed calculations for the decay of the nuclei of neutral Polonium and Thorium atoms over a range of commonly encountered alpha particle kinetic energies (α ∼ O(10 MeV)).

Mots clés: 23.60.+e; 34.50.Fa; 23.20.-g.; 27.80.+w; 27.90.+b; 23.20.-g

S R Mcconnell, a N Artemyev, A Surzhykov. Alignment of atomic inner-shells following alpha-decay-induced ionization. Journal of Physics B: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics, 2011, 44 (14), pp.145204. ⟨10.1088/0953-4075/44/14/145204⟩. ⟨hal-00636643⟩