Photodetachment microscopy to an excited spectral term and the electron affinity of phosphorus

2011/09/21 by Ramón J. Peláez, Christophe Blondel, Mickaël Vandevraye +2 · 6 citations
Chemistry · Physics and Astronomy · #Electrochemical Analysis and Applications #Spectroscopy and Quantum Chemical Studies #Mass Spectrometry Techniques and Applications #Excited state #Atomic physics #Ion #Chemistry #Excitation #Electron #Electron affinity (data page) #Ground state #Analytical Chemistry (journal) #Physics #Molecule

paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/0953-4075/44/19/195009

openalex publication_date 2011/09/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04

Abstract

A beam of P − ions produced by a cesium sputtering ion source was photodetached in the presence of an electric field, with a single-mode ring dye laser. Neutral P can be produced at one or the other of the fine-structure sub-levels of its 3s 2 3p 3 2 D o excited term. This is the first atomic photodetachment microscopy experiment with excitation of the parent neutral atom out of the fundamental spectral term. The background electron signal due to ground-state photodetachment notwithstanding, photodetachment microscopy images produced at the excited thresholds could be analysed to provide a measure of these excited-term thresholds with interferometric precision. Starting from the three possible fine-structure sub-levels of P − 3s 2 3p 4 3 P, the five fine-structure thresholds that may be detected, taking the selection rules into account, have been measured. They are combined with the spectroscopic data available in the literature on neutral P to produce an improved experimental value of the electron affinity e A of phosphorus: 602 179(8) m −1 or 0.746 607(10) eV. Taking all covariances of the optimized energy levels into account, one can merge them with the former measure of the three lowest detachment thresholds of P − , which results in a slightly more precise value of e A (P): 602 181(8) m −1 , or 0.746 609(9) eV. The accuracy of e A (P) is now essentially limited by the uncertainty on the 2 D o 3/2 and 2 D o 5/2 energy levels of the neutral atom. The fine-structure intervals of the 3s 2 3p 3 2 D o doublet of the neutral atom and of the 3s 2 3p 4 3 P triplet of the negative ion have their accuracy improved by more than one order of magnitude.

Citations

• On the fine structure photodetachment intensities using the irreducible tensorial expression of second quantization operators
• Ab initiocalculations of the33S 3p4 3PJand33S−/37, 35Cl 3p5 2PoJhyperfine structures
• Binding energies in atomic negative ions
• Isotope shift in the electron affinity of chlorine
• Pulsed photodetachment microscopy and the electron affinity of iodine
• Electron spectrometry at the µeV level and the electron affinities of Si and F
• Binding Energies in Atomic Negative Ions: III

Cited by

• Intra-cavity photodetachment microscopy and the electron affinity of germanium
• Accurate electron affinity of atomic cerium and excited states of its anion*
• Electron affinity of lead
• Accurate electron affinity of Co and fine-structure splittings ofCo−via slow-electron velocity-map imaging
• Isotope shift of the electron affinity of carbon measured by photodetachment microscopy
• Electron affinity (data page) [wikipedia]