Oscillator strengths and radiative decay rates for spin-changing S–P transitions in helium: finite nuclear mass effects

Abstract

We have calculated the electric dipole (E1) and magnetic quadrupole (M2) oscillator strengths and spontaneous decay rates for 24 spin-changing transitions of atomic helium. We included the effects of the finite nuclear mass and the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron augmented by the recently derived Pachucki term. The specific transitions for 4He are and with and for For the E1 calculations we used the Breit approximation and pseudostate expansions to perform the perturbation sums over intermediate states in both the length and velocity gauge as a check on both numerical accuracy and validity of the transition operators. The corrections for the nuclear mass and the electron anomaly tend to cancel, indicating that if one is included, then so should be the other. The tables give mass- and anomaly-dependent coefficients permitting the easy generation of results for the other isotopes of helium.