The 2p photoionization of ground-state sodium in the vicinity of Cooper minima

The photoionization processes of ground-state sodium have been investigated with the multiconfiguration Dirac–Fock method. The results are in good or at least reasonable agreement with available experimental and theoretical data. In the energy region near the threshold, the cross sections show non-monotonic changes because of Cooper minima, which due to the sign changes of dominant dipole matrix elements and are very sensitive to electron correlations. As the energy increases continuously, the radial wave functions of the photoelectrons will move towards the nucleus. The values of the cross sections, and hence the Cooper minima, mainly depend on the relative positions of the one-electron radial wave functions of the initial bound electrons $2p_{1/2,3/2}$ and the continuum photoelectrons. (paper)