Autoionization in xenon

The authors have studied both even- and odd-parity autoionizing levels in xenon. These levels lie between the Xe/sup +/ /sup 2/P/sub 3/2/ and /sup 2/P/sub 1/2/ ionization limits. Their technique is laser spectroscopy of a thermal metastable atomic beam of xenon. One-photon laser spectroscopy from the 6s'[1/2]/sub 0/ level has been used to study the np'[1/2]/sub 1/ and np'[3/2]/sub 1/ autoionization doublets, n = 7-20. These had previously been observed only for n = 7,8. The authors are using a MQDT analysis of both discrete and autoionizing even-parity J = 1 levels (five channels) to understand the autoionization line profiles. They have also used two-photon laser spectroscopy from the 6s[3/2]/sub 2/ metastable level via various J = 1,2 6p' levels to observe the odd-parity ns'[1/2]/sub 0 1/, nd'[3/2]/sub 1 2/, and nd'[5/2]/sub 2 3/ autoionizing levels to n > 50. This is the first observation of J not equal to 1 odd-parity autoionization in xenon. The most striking feature of these spectra is the complete absence of the very intense, very broad transitions to nd'[3/2]/sub 1/, which dominate the photoabsorption spectrum from the xenon J = 0 ground state. The other nd' levels (J = 2.3) and ns'[1/2]/sub 0/ are all comparable in width to the previously observed ns'[1/2]/sub 1/ levels. The authors present the results of position and width measurements for these levels