Studies of energy levels, hyperfine structure, and transition probabilities for neutral silicon

Abstract

The multi-configuration Dirac–Hartree–Fock method and active space approach are used to investigate the energy levels, hyperfine structure constants, and transition probabilities of a neutral silicon atom. The contributions of Breit interactions and quantum electrodynamics correction are considered. Compared with other theoretical and experimental values of energy levels, our values are in good agreement; the discrepancies of the majority of energy levels calculated are within 1% of experimental values, and the energy levels calculated are very close to other theoretical values. The number of energy levels we considered is larger than that of any other theoretical calculations. The values of the hyperfine structure constant A of the radioactive 29Si atom that we calculated are in good agreement with experimental values. From these results we can predict the hyperfine structure constant A of other states of 29Si where no other theoretical results are available. The transition probabilities of neutral silicon have also been calculated and discussed.