Effects of the electron correlation and Breit and hyperfine interactions on the lifetime of the2p53sstates in neutral neon

Abstract

In the framework of the multiconfiguration Dirac-Hartree-Fock method, we investigate the transition properties of four excited states in the $2p^53s$ configuration of neutral neon. The electron correlation effects are taken into account systematically by using the active space approach. The effect of higher-order correlation on fine structures is shown. We also study the influence of the Breit interaction and find that it reduces the oscillator strength of the $^3P^o_1 - ^1S_0$ transition by 17%. It turns out that the inclusion of the Breit interaction is essential even for such a light atomic system. Our ab initio calculated line strengths, oscillator strengths and transition rates are compared with other theoretical values and experimental measurements. Good agreement is found except for the $^3P^o_2 - ^1S_0$ M2 transition for which discrepancies of around 15% between theories and experiments remain. In addition, the impact of hyperfine interactions on the lifetimes of the $^3P^o_0$ and $^3P^o_2$ metastable states is investigated for the $^{21}$Ne isotope (I=3/2). We find that hyperfine interactions reduce the lifetimes drastically. For the $^3P^o_0$ state the lifetime is decreased by a factor of 630.