Nuclear excitation by electron transition rate confidence interval in a $^{201}$Hg local thermodynamic equilibrium plasma
Résumé
Nuclear excitation by electron transition (NEET) is predicted to be the dominant excitation process of the first
^{201}Hg isomeric state in a laser heated plasma. This process may occur when the energy difference between a nuclear transition and an atomic transition is close to zero, provided the quantum selection rules are fulfilled. At local thermodynamic equilibrium, an average atom model may be used, in a first approach, to evaluate the NEET rate in plasma. The statistical nature of the electronic transition spectrum is then described by the means of a Gaussian distribution around the average atom configuration. However, using a continuous function to describe the electronic spectrum is questionable in the framework of a resonant process, such as NEET. In order to get an idea of when it can be relied upon to predict a NEET rate in plasma, we present in this paper a NEET rate calculation using a model derived from detailed configuration accounting. This calculation allows us to define a confidence interval of the NEET rate around its average atom mean value, which is the first step to design a
future experiment.