Oscillator strengths for transitions among Fe III levels belonging to the three lowest configurations

Accurate oscillator strengths and Einstein A-coefficients for some El and E2 transitions among 3d6, 3d5 4s and 3d5 4p levels of FeIII are presented and compared with other available results. The present results comprise by far the largest configuration interaction calculation for this astrophysically important ion, and include relativistic effects through the Breit-Pauli operator. The core-valence effects from a large number of 3d6 and 3d5 cores are carefully treated by optimising 4d, 4f, 5s, 5p, 5d, 5f and 6p orbitals either as a correction or as a correlation orbital while 1s, 2s, 2p, 3s, 3p and 3d Hartree-Fock functions are used. The 4s and 4p functions are optimised as spectroscopic orbitals. Fine-tuning of the ab initio energies was done through adjusting by a small amount some diagonal elements of the Hamiltonian matrix. It is found that for many of the relatively strong dipole transitions, our calculated oscillator strengths agree with available calculations, while for the weaker transitions our results often disagree with the previously determined results. We also present gA values for five E2 transitions for the multiplets 3d65DJ → 3d5 (6S)4s 5S2. The present results for these transitions show a 30-40% increase over the results previously published.