Benford’s law in atomic spectra and opacity databases

Abstract

The intriguing law of anomalous numbers, also named Benford’s law, states that the significant digits of data follow a logarithmic distribution favoring the smallest values. In this work, we test the compliance with this law of the atomic databases developed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) focusing on line energies, oscillator strengths, Einstein coefficients and radiative opacities. The considered databases are the Atomic Spectra Database (ASD) and the NIST-LANL (Los Alamos National Laboratory) Lanthanide/Actinide Opacity Database. The present study is not limited to the first digit and the case of multipole lines is also considered. The fact that the law is verified with a high accuracy means that the occurrence of digits reflects the constraints induced, in a given angular-momentum coupling, by the selection rules for atomic processes. As a consequence, Benford’s law may be of great interest to detect inconsistencies in atomic databases.