Hamburg 2009 – scientific programme

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A: Fachverband Atomphysik

A 35: Precision Spectroscopy of Atoms and Ions VI

A 35.1: Fachvortrag

Friday, March 6, 2009, 10:30–11:00, VMP 6 HS-B

Precision Measurement of the K-Shell Spectrum from Highly Charged Xenon With a Quantum Microcalorimeter — •Daniel B. Thorn^1,2, F. Scott Porter⁴, Ming F. Gu³, Gregory V. Brown³, Peter Beiersdorfer³, Caroline A. Kilbourne⁴, and Richard L. Kelley⁴ — ¹ExterMe Matter Institute EMMI, 64291 Darmstadt, Germany — ²GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung GmbH, 64291 Darmstadt, Germany — ³Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA 94550, USA — ⁴Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA, MD 20771, USA

We present a measurement of the K-shell spectrum from highly charged xenon ions recorded with a high-energy microcalorimeter array that can distinguish between various theories for the atomic structure of the two electron system. The array was designed to provide high quantum efficiency in the 10-60 keV x-ray range. A resolution of 34 eV at 31 keV is achieved, which is an order of magnitude better than previous measurements. This allows for a ≤ 2 eV measurement of the Xe⁵²⁺ and Xe⁵³⁺ K-shell transitions without the uncertainty of unresolved blends that afflicted previous measurements. This work was performed under the auspices of the U. S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-C52-07NA27344 and was supported by NASA grants to LLNL and GSFC.